The ruling is distinct from another case involving an internal auditor at Chanel who was dismissed in 2018 for concealing his marriage to a former employee, herself dismissed and engaged in a dispute with the group. The judges had held that the marriage alone was not sufficient to establish a conflict of interest.
The consequences were also felt in the agency’s day-to-day operations. Nexity Lamy decided to dismiss its director on November 25, 2021.
This executive, identified in the proceedings as Mr. O., managed several real estate agencies and was the group’s territorial ambassador in the Grand Est region. He supervised a team of about forty employees.
Among them were his wife, head of the condominium management department, and another employee responsible for litigation. Both women reported to him.
According to the judges’ findings, he was also in a romantic relationship with the latter, with whom he had a child, then ten months old. He assured her that he was separated from his wife, which was untrue, the ruling states.
Feeling deceived, the employee ended their relationship. Both women, who say they were deceived and manipulated, also expressed fears for their professional futures.
According to the judges, this breakup led to a suicide attempt by the director on the night of October 5 to 6, followed by hospitalization and sick leave until October 25.
His partner was placed on sick leave until October 15, while his wife was absent for five days. The agency was thus deprived at the same time of its director and two department heads.
The group did not cite the infidelities themselves, but the disruptions that this personal conduct had caused within the agency. The Colmar Court of Appeal had already rejected the director’s appeal on December 6, 2024.
The judges cited several factors: the simultaneous absences of managers, the fears of retaliation expressed by the two employees and, above all, the director’s loss of authority over his team.
They found that he had undermined the trust his employer could place in him to run the agency and exercise his managerial authority.
The director challenged this analysis. His main argument was that the alleged conduct fell within his private life and could not justify the termination of his contract.
He also stressed that the two employees’ periods of sick leave had been relatively short and disputed that the company had been sufficiently disrupted.
The judges recalled a principle of labor law: an employee cannot normally be dismissed for conduct relating to his or her private life. An employer cannot penalize an employee simply because it disapproves of his or her romantic life.
The courts do not consider that maintaining several romantic relationships constitutes, in itself, professional misconduct. They do hold, however, that the concrete consequences of such conduct for the company may constitute a real and serious cause for dismissal.
When private life disrupts operations, undermines hierarchical relationships and erodes the trust required for managerial duties, a dismissal may be justified. That is what the judges found.
By rejecting the director’s appeal, the Court of Cassation confirms that the protection of private life does not preclude every dismissal decision.
In the Nexity Lamy case, it was therefore not the director’s romantic life that was sanctioned, but the established harm to the agency’s functioning and to the authority he was required to exercise there.