A 7-month pregnant woman injured in the car accident caused by Pierre Palmade this weekend has lost her child. Expertise on this fetus will be decisive in the judicial investigation.
What legal status for a fetus? The question arises three days after the road accident caused by the actor Pierre Palmade during which three people were injured. One of them, a 7 month pregnant woman, lost her baby. If the balance sheet remains this one, one of the challenges of the investigation will be to determine what offenses the actor can be prosecuted.
For the time being, the Melun prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation by retaining the broadest qualification as is usually done of “manslaughter”. At the end of investigations which already promise to be very long and technical, the facts could be reclassified as “involuntary injuries”. Everything will indeed depend on the court decision concerning the status of the child lost by the pregnant woman during the accident.
“If the national advisory committee of ethics qualifies as ‘potential human person’, the embryo and the fetus do not however, to date, have legal personality in French law”, deciphers for BFMTV.com Me Swéta Pannagas, lawyer specializing in personal injury law.
Expertise to be carried out
An autopsy will be performed on this fetus to find and define as precisely as possible the causes of death. “There will no doubt be fetal and placental investigations as well,” says Me Pannagas. The investigation will have to determine if the pregnant woman gave birth, if the medical team had to perform an emergency caesarean section, if the child was able to breathe or if he died of injuries caused by the shock of the accident.
“Everything will depend on whether the fetus was born alive and viable,” summarizes the lawyer.
“The Court of Cassation has a position which is quite particular, it considered that a fetus was not strictly speaking a human person”, abounds Me Etienne Lejeune, lawyer specializing in road law. Indeed, on several occasions, such as in June 2001, the highest jurisdiction of the French judicial order was seized of cases similar to the tragic accident of this weekend. Each time, she had rejected the appeals calling for the facts to be qualified as homicide and not as unintentional injuries.
In 2014, the Tarbes criminal court stood out from this case law by condemning a motorist for “manslaughter” after the death of the fetus of a six and a half month pregnant woman, knocked down by a vehicle. Based on medical expertise, the public prosecutor considered that the fetus was “viable” and that he was “only dead as a result of the accident”, because “of the shock of the fetus against the uterine wall” . The decision was ultimately overturned on appeal.
However, French law has specificities. In cases of intentional homicide, murder, the pregnancy of the victim is an aggravating circumstance, which leads to life imprisonment. “Similarly, the legislator has criminalized the fact of ‘wanting to destroy the unborn child’ without wanting to kill the mother, by forced abortion for example”, adds Me Pannagas.
Moral prejudice
If on the criminal level, in the state of case law, the offense of manslaughter is difficult to characterize, on the civil level, a prejudice can be recognized. Beyond the physical harm to victims, there is moral harm. “It will be necessary to evaluate in particular the suffering endured and in this case the moral suffering, and specifically those relating to the loss of the baby until the stabilization of the state of the mother”, details the lawyer who advises the victims. to seek advice from the start of the procedure.
And to continue: “In addition, this will probably leave permanent scars on the psychological level, such as repercussions on all levels (family social professional).”
Another paradox: the law provides since 2009 the possibility for the parents of a child born lifeless the right to give him a first name, and since December 6, 2021 a name, and to register him in the register of the Civil State. “This registration of first and last names has no legal effect. The document drawn up does not prejudge whether the child has lived or not; any interested party may refer to the court of law to rule on the matter”, further clarifies the legislative text.
