Information Note on the Court’s case-law 54

June 2003

Editions Plon v. France (dec.) - 58148/00

Decision 27.5.2003 [Section II]

Article 10

Article 10-1

Freedom of expression

Prohibition on distributing a book containing information on a deceased Head of State covered by medical secrecy: admissible

The applicant company had acquired from a journalist and from Dr Gubler, who for several years had been personal phys ician to the President of the French Republic, François Mitterand, the publishing rights in a book entitled Le Grand Secret ( The Great Secret ), which considered the cancer from which President Mitterand had suffered from the beginning of his first term of office, and of which the French public were not officially informed until much later. The work described the relations between President Mitterand and Dr Gruber and the problems which the latter had experienced as a result of the concealment of that diseas e, when the President had undertaken to release a health bulletin every six months. The book was launched on 17 January 1996 – nine days after the death of President Mitterand – and its distribution was prohibited the following day by an interim measure. T he decision banning publication was upheld on appeal. At the same time, the Paris Criminal Court, by a judgment of July 1996, which became final, had found Dr Gruber guilty of the minor offence of breach of professional secrecy and found the journalist who had co-authored the book and the legal representative of the applicant company guilty of aiding and abetting that offence; the court had imposed, respectively, a suspended sentence of four months’ imprisonment, a fine of 30,000 FRF and a fine of 60,000 FR F. The Paris Regional Court upheld the ban on publication of Le Grand Secret and ordered Dr Gruber, the applicant company and its legal representative jointly and severally to pay damages of 100,000 FRF to Mrs Mitterand and 80,000 FRF to each of the Presid ent’s three children. The Court of Appeal ordered Dr Gruber and the applicant company jointly and severally to pay 100,000 FRF damages to Mrs Mitterand and 80,000 FRF to each of the other claimants and confirmed the continuation of the ban on publishing th e work. The court declared the Mitterand family inadmissible in so far as they sought protection of the private life of President Mitterand, stating that the right of everyone to prohibit any form of disclosure of his private life was enjoyed only by the l iving. It further held that although certain passages in the work contained violations against the private life of the Mitterand family, they could not justify a ban on the publication of the entire book. On the other hand, the Court of Appeal observed tha t all the matters published in the book and obtained by Dr Gruber in the exercise of his profession were covered by medicalsecrecy. The court also considered that the exercise of the right to freedom of expression could give rise to certain restrictions, n otably for the protection of the rights of others. The applicant company’s appeal on a point of law was dismissed.

Admissible under Article 10.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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