A fifty-year-old from the North of Vaud had booked a spa session at a hotel on the Côte several weeks ago. But shortly before the scheduled date, in May 2023, she asked to be able to use a parking space. However, the hotel refused, on the grounds that its parking lot is reserved for guests who are spending the night on site. The Vaudoise did not accept this refusal and parked her car there anyway when she arrived.
A receptionist intervened to ask her to remove the vehicle. The customer initially refused and raised her voice. But, after the manager intervened, she left the premises, “not without specifying that we were going to hear about her”, underlines the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP). A few days later, the fifty-something began to flood various platforms, such as Google, TripAdvisor, Instagram and Facebook, with negative comments.
The problem is that she did not attack the hotel or its operations, but the trainee receptionist who welcomed her. She wrote, giving his name, that this employee is “dishonest, aggressive and a liar”. The man logically filed a complaint and the Nord Vaudoise was convicted of defamation. However, she opposed the action and, in the end, she preferred to pay 500 francs to the victim, so that she would withdraw her complaint.
The woman is nevertheless outraged by the procedure, considering that criminal law does not protect professional skills. However, in principle, she is right. But “she did not just criticize the way she was received. She multiplied the irreverent qualifiers, with the aim of discrediting the person targeted”, we can read in her penal order. In these conditions, when the Vaudoise claims “to have criticized the profession, but not the person”, her stance “borders on recklessness”, judges the MP.
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