The Lyon administrative court ordered the State to pay 500 euros to Lionel Perrin, a member of the Lyon association Flagrant Déni, engaged in the fight against police violence. This decision, rendered on December 17, 2024, concludes a legal standoff lasting almost five years.
The case dates back to February 2020, when Flagrant Déni was the target of a massive wave of commercial calls and emails. Dozens, sometimes hundreds of requests per day, from multiple companies, sometimes foreign. These untimely canvassing was quickly linked to the publication of an article by the association implicating a police officer from the Lyon BAC for police violence.
The investigation established that one or more agents of the Ministry of the Interior had unwittingly registered Lionel Perrin and the association on telephone canvassing lists.
The court’s judgment is clear: “The commercial canvassing request made in the name of Mr. Perrin without his knowledge from an IP address relating to the internet access service to which the Ministry of the Interior has subscribed constitutes a fault of a nature liable to be committed the responsibility of the State”, reports Rue89Lyon.
This judgment rejects the State’s attempt to defend itself, which sought to shift responsibility onto the agent responsible for the acts. The court considered that “the circumstance that the agent at the origin of the facts remains unknown has no impact on the link with the service”, marking an end to the arguments put forward by the administration.
If the scope of the conviction remains symbolic, with compensation limited to 500 euros, this decision still represents “a small victory”.
This decision does not close all of the proceedings. Although the administrative aspect has now been resolved, criminal proceedings are still underway. The possible identification of the agent at the origin of the harassment remains, to date, an unachieved objective. And for good reason, the data linked to the incriminated IP address was in fact deleted in accordance with the law (deadline of one year exceeded), three weeks before the investigation was transmitted to the Lyon judicial police. This lack of access to key elements had sparked strong criticism from Flagrant Déni.
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