A woman who was declared legally dead in 2017 is now fighting for a court rule that she is, in fact, alive.
Jeanne Pouchain, 58, the former boss of a cleaning firm from the rural commune of Saint-Joseph in eastern France, told Reuters that she clearly remembers the day she discovered she'd been declared dead.
The court of appeal in the nearby city of Lyon had sent her relatives a letter stating that she had died and that they were to pay money she was alleged to have owed.
"I went to see a lawyer who told me it would be quickly resolved as I had been to my doctor who certified that I was very much still alive. But because there had been a [legal] ruling, this wasn’t enough," Pouchain told local journalists, per the Guardian.
Lawyer, Sylvain Cormier, said that she could not believe the extent to which Pouchain had been declared dead.
"It's a crazy story. I couldn't believe it. I never thought that a judge would declare someone dead without a certificate. But the plaintiff claimed Mrs Pouchain was dead, without providing any proof and everyone believed her. Nobody checked," he told AFP, also per the Guardian.
Pouchain was declared dead after a decade-plus legal battle with a former employee at her cleaning firm.
She was ordered to pay the former member of staff about €14,000 in damages by a 2004 industrial tribunal, however, as the case had been established against Pouchain's company and not her specifically, the ruling was never enforced.
The employee went on to attempt to sue again but the case was thrown out of court.
An appeal court then went on to order Pouchain's son and husband to pay the damages in 2016 under the belief that she was dead, and a year later, the former employee told the industrial tribunal that their letters to their former boss had gone unanswered.
It was at this point that the now 58-year-old was declared dead.
Pouchain is now struggling to go about her day-to-day life as she lacks any official documentation like an identity card, driving license, bank account, health insurance - all of which were rendered invalid when she was declared dead.
Pouchain has now accused her former employee of inventing her death in an attempt to claim the 2004 damages from her relatives.
However, the employee's lawyer has put forward the counter-argument that the 58-year-old faked her own death in order to avoid paying.
