A Facebook Post To "friends" Can Lead To Dismissal

The Cour de Cassation (French Supreme Court) recently ruled that an employer can produce in court elements extracted from an employee's private Facebook account, to which it was not authorized to access, as long as (i) this production is indispensable to the exercise of its right to evidence, and (ii) the violation of the employee's privacy is proportionate to the goal pursued.

The September 30, 2020 ruling¹ offered the Cour de Cassation the opportunity to clarify several aspects of its case law on the use of social networks.

An employee of the company Petit Bateau was dismissed for having published on her Facebook "wall" a photograph of the new spring/summer 2015 collection that had been presented exclusively to the company's salespeople and not been made public.