A French pharmacy technician who started working in 1998 at a pharmacy in the south of France was dismissed in 2017 for not holding the legally required diploma for the position. The situation went unnoticed for almost three decades until new owners reviewed workers' documentation and discovered the irregularity. An inspection by the Regional Health Agency officially confirmed the lack of qualifications, leading to the employee's suspension and subsequent dismissal for alleged serious misconduct.
The worker always contested having concealed information, arguing that the situation had been known internally for years. The litigation dragged through the courts, with contradictory decisions: in 2021, the labor court considered the dismissal unfounded and ordered the employer to pay 34,800 euros in damages. However, two years later, the Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the employer, arguing that the worker had breached her duty of loyalty.
The situation changed again when the Court of Cassation intervened, concluding that it was not possible to hold the employee exclusively responsible for an irregularity that the company itself had allowed for decades without carrying out the necessary verifications. The judges considered that the employer had an obligation to confirm whether workers met all the legal requirements to practice the profession.
The case will return to the Court of Appeal for further consideration, but the Court of Cassation's decision establishes a relevant precedent regarding companies' responsibility for verifying workers' professional qualifications, reinforcing that prolonged administrative failures cannot automatically be attributed to the worker.
