The State will have to reimburse the costs caused by the damage to “yellow vests” during a demonstration which took place at the beginning of 2020, according to a decision of the Lyon administrative court obtained by AFP Monday.
On January 9, 2020, on the sidelines of a demonstration of “yellow vests” in Lyon against the pension reform, individuals had thrown paint as well as used oil and painted many tags on the facades of the Grand Hotel -Dieu, famous historic building transformed into a luxury shopping mall in the city center.
Its property manager Scaprim, and several insurers such as Chubb European Group Limited, Axa France IARD, Allianz France, Caisse nationale de réassurance, Mutuelle agricole Groupama and Helvetia Assurances, then turned against the State, which had authorized the demonstration, but the prefect of the Rhône had rejected the claim for compensation.
In a decision dated December 16, the administrative court ordered the State to reimburse the repairs and therefore to pay some 3,000 euros to the Scaprim company and around 17,000 euros to the insurers, as revealed Progress.
The “black blocks” wrongly accused?
During the hearing held in early December, the prefecture argued in defense that the damage had been perpetrated by “thugs present in the procession” adopting the methods of “black blocks”. But according to the court “the report of the operations to maintain order” evokes the presence of “determined” and “at risk” individuals who were not “in total rupture with the demonstration”.
“Under these conditions, the damage resulting from the actions of these demonstrators must be regarded as the fact of offenses committed on the occasion of crowds or rallies”, which are “of a nature to engage the liability without fault of the State on the basis of these same provisions”, concludes the court.
Contacted by AFP, the prefecture indicated that it had not yet made a decision on a possible appeal.
Last May, the State was ordered to pay just over 1.4 million euros to the City of Paris to compensate it for the damage caused during the demonstrations of “yellow vests”. A month earlier, he had already been ordered to pay more than 1.2 million euros to the municipality and the metropolis of Toulouse for the same reasons.