(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned the Lyons Appeals Court’s 13 August 2003 decision to sentence the monthly “Lyon Mag” to pay 100,000 euros (approx. US$112,400) in damages to Beaujolais wine producers, describing the verdict as an “attack on press freedom.” The amount of damages set by the court is “out of all proportion to the […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned the Lyons Appeals Court’s 13 August 2003 decision to sentence the monthly “Lyon Mag” to pay 100,000 euros (approx. US$112,400) in damages to Beaujolais wine producers, describing the verdict as an “attack on press freedom.”
The amount of damages set by the court is “out of all proportion to the harm suffered,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Justice Minister Dominique Perben.
The damages are to be paid to 56 wine cooperatives that filed suit, claiming an article in the magazine’s July-August 2002 issue (no. 116) “denigrated” their product. The Appeals Court also ordered “Lyon Mag” to pay 20,000 euros (approx. US$22,500) in publication costs and 3,000 euros (approx. US$3,370) in court costs. The magazine said it will appeal to the Court of Cassation and, if necessary, to the European Court of Human Rights.
The damages set by the Appeals Court are lower than the 284,143 euros (approx. US$319,300) set by a lower court in Villefranche-sur-Saône (Rhône) in January. This sum could have bankrupted the magazine, which has a turnover of 1.9 million euros (approx. US$2.1 million). At the time, the total damages awarded to the wine cooperatives were calculated at a rate of one euro per hectolitre of their annual production of Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages wines.
Entitled “A respected expert says Beaujolais is not real wine”, the article contained comments by François Mauss, president of the European Grand Jury (an association of professional wine-tasters), who was interviewed by “Lyon Mag” reporter Jean Barbier. In the three-page feature article, Mauss said Beaujolais “is not wine” and that it was “a crappy wine.”
The monthly also ran a more moderate interview with Maurice Large, president of the Beaujolais Wines Inter-Professional Union, entitled, “Beaujolais’ quality is not in doubt.”
In its ruling, the court said, “By misrepresenting the wine known as Beaujolais in this fashion, by resorting to scatological language and likening it to excrement, François Mauss and the journalist who interviewed him went beyond what is acceptable in the exercise of their respective social functions of criticism – even severe criticism – and information, and gravely abused their recognised freedom of expression and publication.”
