The Paris Court of Appeal's ruling of May 14, 2025, is not final.
In a ruling dated May 14, 2025, the Paris Court of Appeal ordered French Bee to pay a cabin manager €45,000 for moral harassment, null and void dismissal, vexatious dismissal, and back pay, overtime, and failure to respect rest periods. 1) Reasons for the judgment of the Paris Court of Appeal of May 14, 2025
In a judgment of May 14, 2025, the Paris Court of Appeal:
UPHOLDS the judgment in its provisions submitted to the court, except to the extent that it ordered French Bee to pay Ms. X the sum of €16,000 for dismissal without real and serious cause;
- dismissed Ms. X's claims for moral harassment;
RULING AGAIN on the overturned claims and ADDING THERETO:
FINDS that Ms. X's dismissal is null and void;
ORDERS French Bee to pay Ms. X the sums of:
- €5,000 for the remaining variable compensation;
- €1,967.31 for back pay and profit-sharing for 2019;
- €7,000 in compensation for the harm caused by moral harassment; - €29,000 in damages for the null and void dismissal;
- €1,000 in damages for the vexatious nature of the dismissal;
RECALLS that salary claims bear interest at the statutory rate from the employer's receipt of the summons to appear before the adjudication office and that compensation claims bear interest at the statutory rate from the date of the decision ordering them;
DISCRIMES Ms. X's claim for the remaining compensatory notice pay;
ORDERS French Bee to pay Ms. X the sum of €2,000 pursuant to Article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure;
DISCRIMES the remaining claims. 2) Regarding moral harassment:
Under Article L.1152-1 of the French Labor Code, no employee shall be subjected to repeated acts of moral harassment whose purpose or effect is a deterioration of their working conditions likely to infringe on their rights and dignity, impair their physical or mental health, or compromise their professional future.
Under Article L.1152-2 of the same code, no person who has suffered or refused to suffer repeated acts of moral harassment or who has, in good faith, reported or testified to such acts may be subject to the measures mentioned in Article L.1121-21, which includes dismissal.
Article L.1154-1 of this Code provides that, in the event of a dispute, the employee concerned must present factual evidence that allows for the presumption of harassment, and it is then up to the employer, based on this evidence, to prove that the actions do not constitute harassment and that its decision is justified by objective evidence.
To rule on the existence of moral harassment, the judge must examine the evidence relied on by the employee, taking into account any medical documents provided, and assess whether the materially established facts, taken as a whole, allow for the presumption of harassment. If so, it is up to the judge to assess, at its sole discretion, whether the employer proves that the alleged actions are unrelated to harassment and whether its decisions are justified by objective evidence. In this case, Ms. X claims that she suffered acts constituting moral harassment since, upon her arrival in Réunion in July 2017 for the opening of the base, she did not have the necessary resources to carry out her duties as Base Manager; she was the victim of ostracism and isolation by the rest of the team, as well as attempts to destabilize her by questioning her judgment and decision-making abilities; she was subjected to hostile, intimidating, and vexatious remarks and tactics from her line manager, Mr. Y, as well as an abusive and unjustified suspension from her duties; she was also assigned demeaning tasks; and, finally, she suffered unfounded accusations of disloyal behavior and the threat of criminal prosecution. She states that this resulted in a deterioration of her working conditions and health. First, with regard to the facts relating to the failure to provide the resources necessary to carry out her duties as base manager, the appellant claims that she was deprived of computer access to the intranet and her work files, which she only obtained in March and April 2018 after several oral and written reminders; that she was refused access to the parking lot and forced to use the paid visitor parking lot far from her office for many months; that she only obtained an access badge in January 2019; and that the room dedicated to flight preparation did not have a telephone line and did not allow for document storage, being open to all staff. In support of her allegations, she produced:
- emails she sent to her superiors, notably on September 20, October 9, and December 19, 2017, in which she requested the provision of an office and computer equipment, as well as telephone access, as well as a response sent to her on December 19, 2017, informing her that she had no computer equipment pending delivery to the Paris Court of Appeal and that "nothing has been delivered to [the] freight forwarder OMF," and an email dated February 27, 2018, which stated that the computer equipment was available but awaiting the invoice allowing it to be sent by freight service, and exchanges showing that this equipment was not received until the end of March 2018; - email exchanges from October 2017 to December 2018, showing that she did not have access to the car park and was forced to use a distant paid car park, which also required her to carry various documents and boxes outside and put her in difficulty on bad weather days.
In light of these elements, the facts are established.
Secondly, with regard to the facts relating to her exclusion and isolation by the rest of the team, and to attempts to destabilize her by questioning her judgment and decision-making abilities, Ms. X firstly maintains that, although she was the most experienced cabin crew member, she was not invited to participate in any of the inaugural flights with the Chief Cabin Crew Member, nor to the opening of the Réunion base, despite her duties as base manager, which caused incomprehension among her colleagues.
This fact, the materiality of which is not disputed by the company, is established. Ms. X also claims that she was also excluded from the mentoring of the cabin crew chiefs, unlike the other instructors. In this regard, she produced email exchanges from which it emerged that she was not among the "mentors" designated for new arrivals by her line manager, Mr. Y, to whom she had sent an email stating: "Is there a reason why I'm not on the list? Overlooked? I would have liked to be." He replied: "We'll discuss it again, but there will be other opportunities."
This fact is established.
Ms. X further maintains that she had received contradictory instructions regarding the organization of the activities necessary for the performance of her duties. She states that the Human Resources Director asked her to organize an outing in February 2018, but forced her to communicate on the Workplace intranet, which was rarely used by employees, while all communications about the activities were done via professional messaging. This doomed the activity to failure due to the lack of visibility. She also encountered silence from the Human Resources department on this point.
Based on the email exchanges produced by the appellant, these facts are established.
Ms. X also claims that she never received the minutes of her 2018 performance review and that Mr. Y decided the amount of her performance-based bonus even though the objectives had never been set for her.
These facts are established.
The employee adds that she was denigrated on the WhatsApp group, as a colleague reported to her. It is clear from the exchange she produced in this regard in Exhibit No. 54 that this fact is established.
The appellant also maintains that her employer asked her to provide a replacement even though she had requested a schedule change due to her mother's funeral. She states that the Human Resources Director never offered her condolences upon her mother's death, and that it was only at her insistence that she was permitted to cancel the flight on the day of the funeral, March 30, 2018.
It is clear from the email exchanges produced that on Sunday, March 25, 2018, the employee notified Mr. Y, her manager, and Mr. Z, the rostering manager, of her mother's death, stating that she was unable to fly the next day and that the funeral was scheduled to take place at the end of the week, on a Thursday or Friday.
While Mr. Z told her that same day that he offered his condolences and had removed her from the flight in question and placed her on leave, it appears from the evidence produced that he then asked her the following day, given two sick days, if she could fly on the evening of Friday, March 30. The employee responded as follows: "As I told you, I have the funeral at the end of the week, I'm leaving Wednesday evening, arriving Thursday, I have a 6-hour drive. The religious ceremony is on Friday and the cremation on Saturday. That's it." Her interlocutor replied: "OK, noted. Good luck."
The facts are established. The employee further claims that she was the only one prohibited from upgrading on a false pretext, unlike her colleagues, and that she received an unjustified reprimand in October 2017. She adds that her decisions regarding the selection of her colleagues and the appointment of permanent employees were never respected.
In the absence of any evidence in this regard, these facts have not been established.
Ms. X claims that she experienced a delay in the allocation of a programmed key for the Duty Free trolleys, which prevented her from receiving a programmed key for more than eight months despite her requests, and complicated the performance of her work duties since the absence of payment terminals and sales support tablets caused significant inconvenience for passengers and a consequent drop in sales, impacting her crew's commissions. Based on the email exchanges produced in Exhibit 39, this fact is established. Ms. X also complains that her employer informed her that the technical training she was to deliver to trainees was to be conducted in French, even though she realized on the day of the training that one of the trainees was a foreigner, which caused her considerable difficulty in front of the students by forcing her to communicate in English without having prepared.
While it is clear from the documents produced that her line manager had indeed indicated that the courses could be prepared in French, the unexpected presence of a non-French-speaking trainee and the alleged difficulties have not been established. Ms. X further complains of criticism that contradicts the instructions given to instructors, stating in particular that in June 2018, Mr. W, the cabin crew base manager, had indicated that a box on the familiarization flight form was intended for comments from cabin crew chiefs, yet had criticized her on February 27, 2019, for having included a comment as a cabin crew chief in that box.
She also claims that her direct manager, Mr. Y, had questioned her professional abilities by criticizing her for having prepared a training plan in French and by telling her, with a copy to the Human Resources department:
"As you know, all our cabin crew training is in English."
In light of the email exchanges produced as Exhibits 41 and 42, these facts are established.
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Frédéric CHHUM avocat et ancien membre du conseil de l’ordre des avocats de Paris (mandat 2019-2021)
CHHUM AVOCATS (Paris, Nantes, Lille)
e-mail: chhum@chhum-avocats.com
https://www.instagram.com/fredericchhum/?hl=fr
.Paris: 34 rue Petrelle 75009 Paris tel: 0142560300
.Nantes: 41, Quai de la Fosse 44000 Nantes tel: 0228442644
.Lille: : 45, Rue Saint Etienne 59000 Lille – Ligne directe +(33) 03.20.57.53.24
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