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Jeanne Pouchain: "It's a crazy story"
Photo:
JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK / AFP
The alleged death of the French Jeanne Pouchain has very unpleasant consequences for the 58-year-old herself.
She lost ID, her bank account, and her health insurance.
The woman then went to a court in Lyon to be declared alive.
“It's a crazy story,” her lawyer Sylvain Cormier told AFP.
A former employee of Pouchain's cleaning company simply claimed her boss was dead - "without any evidence, and everyone believed it," he said.
"Nobody checked."
Put yourself dead?
The background is a legal dispute: According to the lawyer, the former employee had to leave the company in 2000 after Pouchain lost a major contract.
Four years later, a labor court awarded the fired cleaner more than 14,000 euros in compensation.
The verdict was never carried out because she had sued Pouchain's company and not against herself. However, at some point an appeals court sentenced Pouchain's husband and son to pay the compensation because the court believed the former employer was dead.
However, the lawyer of the former employee presents things very differently: Pouchain is to blame for the misery herself, since she pretended to be dead to escape justice and did not answer any more letters.
Pouchain says she is hoping for legal confirmation that she is alive.
"The authorities have told me that I am no longer considered dead, but not yet alive either."
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apr / AFP