Yet another part of the case between the studio and former employees was played out on Tuesday afternoon, more particularly the appeal procedure initiated against the judgment of November 21, 2019. This condemned the company for the exposure of an employee to photomontages, but did not grant the requalification of his resignation by formal notice of dismissal. We already talked about it at length in the columns of Gamekult last October in this article summarizing all the procedures completed or in progress in the photomontage affair.
Since the first instance, the employee has received the support of the Defender of Rights, an independent administrative authority helping victims of discrimination. The report is unequivocal: not only can the employee claim the status of whistleblower, but he must also benefit from a null dismissal with regard to the discrimination suffered during his exposure to the photomontages. Even if the judge is not required to follow the conclusions of this independent authority, it is a valuable argumentative asset that often tips the balance in his direction. However, Quantic Dream’s strategy was clear: to challenge the legal competence of the defender of rights in this case. Arguing his inability to take up the case according to its statutes, the studio’s lawyer informed the judge of his intention not to let the defender of rights present his observations.
An “atypical” file
From the start of the hearing on Tuesday, the judge called the case “atypical file”, as we are told Heloise Linossierjournalist of JV the mag present on site. The rest was just as interesting: after the argument of the employee’s lawyer, who returned to all the most shocking aspects of the case before a visibly surprised judge, it was up to the representative of the defender of rights to speak. . It was then, according to several people present at the hearing, that the normal procedure stopped.
“Quantic Dream’s lawyer pleaded for the rights defender’s representative not to be able to speak himself” says Héloïse Linossier. The visibly irritated judge put an end to the debates and relinquished the case in the process, referring to a next hearing in collegial formation for January 3, 2023. The lawyer mandated by the defender of rights then had this sentence : “you have deprived the defender of rights to present his observations”. A first for her according to her comments, which were reported to us by the employee in dispute with the developer.
While the verdict should have been rendered in June, this new dismissal postpones by eight months the resolution of a case which paralyzes the life of the employee in question. He assures us that he cannot find work in his sector in Paris, and is only waiting for the end of the trial and the recognition by the courts of his whistleblower status for his retraining. He is also not the only individual still concerned by justice, since the employee not belonging to the IT department that we mentioned in our previous article, and who had won his case on appeal on October 6, 2021, remains continued by Quantic Dream. The studio has indeed appealed in cassation to try as a last resort to overturn the judgment of the Court of Appeal. A procedure which should, logically, take several years, at a time when the possible acquisition of Quantic Dream by NetEase is in the news.
Also read | Quantic Dream facing justice: return on the conflicts with former employees
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