(RSF/IFEX) – On 13 January 2003, RSF criticised a French court’s ruling against a French magazine as “excessive and totally disproportionate.” On 10 January, a court in Villefranche-sur-Saône, near the French city of Lyon, ordered the monthly “Lyon Mag” to pay 254,143 euros (approx. US$269,000) in damages to 56 wine-producing cooperatives in the Beaujolais region. […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 13 January 2003, RSF criticised a French court’s ruling against a French magazine as “excessive and totally disproportionate.” On 10 January, a court in Villefranche-sur-Saône, near the French city of Lyon, ordered the monthly “Lyon Mag” to pay 254,143 euros (approx. US$269,000) in damages to 56 wine-producing cooperatives in the Beaujolais region. They had complained that the magazine had “denigrated” their product after it published sharp criticism of the local wine.
“We ask you to consider the full implications of this decision, which presents a serious economic threat to the magazine’s survival,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Lyon Appeals Court President Pierre Vittaz, asking that he cancel the lower court’s order that “Lyon Mag” pay the damages immediately.
The controversial article, which appeared in the magazine’s July-August 2002 issue, was entitled, “A respected expert says Beaujolais is not real wine.” François Mauss, chairman of the European Grand Jury, an association of professional wine-tasters, had criticised the way in which the wine was produced.
He told the author of the article, Jean Barbier, that it was “shitty wine.” The magazine, which ran three pages about Beaujolais, also included a less outspoken interview with Interprofessional Beaujolais Wine Association President Maurice Large entitled, “The quality of Beaujolais is not in question.”
The court said that “by misrepresenting Beaujolais wine in such a disgusting way, by comparing it to excrement, [Mauss and Barbier had] exceeded the acceptable limits of their respective social roles as critic and journalistâ¦by seriously abusing their right to freedom of expression and publication.”
The total damages awarded to the wine cooperatives was calculated at a rate of one euro per hectolitre of their annual wine production. The court also ordered “Lyon Mag” to pay for the publication of the verdict in five newspapers, as well as the costs of bringing the case to trial.
“Lyon Mag” editor-in-chief Lionel Favrot said the magazine had asked that the immediate payment order be dropped because it was “exorbitant” in view of the publishers’ annual turnover of 1.9 million euros (approx. US$2 million).
