No disciplinary action will be taken against the magistrate who ordered the expulsion of a lawyer from Nice during a hearing in March in Aix-en-Provence, an incident which caused a stir in the profession, indicated the Department of Justice in the Senate. “After having read the entire file, the course of events and the behavior of all the protagonists, and taking into account the appeasement of the situation, the Prime Minister has decided not to take any disciplinary action”, writes the ministry in its response, on September 9, to a written question from Senator Jean Hingray on March 25.
Victim of this expulsion, Me Paul Sollacaro, son of the president of Ajaccio Antoine Sollacaro, assassinated in 2012 in Corsica, denounced this decision Monday evening, believing that “we would not do better if we wanted a war between lawyers and magistrates” .
This hearing incident took place on March 11, during the trial of 11 defendants in a drug trafficking case, after Me Sollacaro requested the disjunction of the case of his client, positive for Covid-19. This request was rejected by the president of the Aix-en-Provence criminal court, Marc Rivet, who also objected to the defendant appearing before the court.
The request deemed “inadmissible” by the Superior Council of the Judiciary
After heated exchanges between the lawyer and the magistrate, the latter had Me Sollacaro evacuated by the police. Out of solidarity, all the other lawyers present had deserted the room. Speaking of a “serious hearing incident”, the first president of the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal had acknowledged that ordering the eviction of a lawyer was “a rare and extreme decision, just like was the behavior of the lawyer concerned”, who would have “uttered invectives and virulent personal attacks” at the address of the presiding judge.
Jean Castex had seized the general inspection of Justice a few days later. It is on the basis of this report that the Prime Minister decided not to take any sanction. Me Sollacaro had personally filed a complaint for “aggravated violence”, but his request had been deemed “inadmissible” at the beginning of June by the Superior Council of the Judiciary, according to which “only the litigant concerned by the legal procedure” can complain about the behavior of a magistrate in the exercise of his functions.
