The industrial tribunal on Monday dismissed ASM Clermont Auvergne’s request to suspend the employment contract of player Mohamed Haouas, convicted of hitting his wife before he joined the Top 14 club this summer. The board “dismisses the ASM Clermont Auvergne club’s request for suspension of the effective date of the fixed-term employment contract concluded on May 10, 2023 and set for July 1, 2023 between Mr. Mohamed Haouas and the club”, underlines the advice. Although deemed “admissible”, the club’s request is “unfounded”.
The industrial tribunal was seized in summary proceedings to suspend the employment contract of the pillar of the XV of France which must begin in July, before a hearing on the merits in September. The council also rejects the request made by Mohamed Haouas “for the early termination of the employment contract by way of the press dated May 30, 2023”. After the player’s conviction, the ASM announced in a press release that he could “not wear the club’s colors on the field, without however mentioning an “early break”.
The ASM will have to reimburse the legal costs
Thus the council dismisses the French international, deprived of the 2023 World Cup after his conviction, of his request for payment of 390,000 euros in respect of the provision to be claimed on this early termination, as well as that of 50,000 euros in respect of damages moral. The ASM is ordered to pay him 800 euros for his legal costs and will have to bear the costs (procedure costs). The council “returns the parties”, to the procedure on the merits, of which a hearing is to be held in September.
Mohamed Haouas’s lawyer and the ASM could not be reached immediately to comment on this decision. At the hearing on Wednesday, club lawyer Me Patrick Puso claimed that ASM had been “deceived” by the player and his current club Montpellier: “This is not the profile we hired”, so that Mr. Haouas has a duty to “respect the criteria of ethics and deontology of French rugby”.
A new hearing scheduled for Monday
In defense, Me Arnaud Dubois had for his part denounced a “grotesque” situation. Mohamed Haouas is “not a product but a rugby player” who “we want to prohibit from working and feeding his family”, he declared. The pillar with 16 selections for the France team, tried in immediate appearance, was sentenced to one year in prison on May 30 by the Montpellier Criminal Court for hitting his wife in front of the shopping center where she works. The conditions of his sentence, flexible, must be discussed during a new hearing on Monday.