More than a hundred black dresses gathered this Tuesday, October 25 in the Salle des Pas Perdus of the Montpellier Court of Justice, primarily under the sign of meditation. Magistrates, clerks, lawyers marked a minute of silence, in tribute to a magistrate, who died at the age of 44 of a cardiac arrest in the middle of an immediate appearance hearing, on October 18, at the Nanterre judicial court.

The president of the judicial court Catherine Lelong, the prosecutor Fabrice Belargent and Me Pierre Chatel representing the order of lawyers joined the appeal of the magistrates’ union and the Union of magistrates.

Call to strike

The death of this judge arouses strong emotion in the French courthouses, such as the suicide of a magistrate in Béthune in 2021 which had raised a wave of mobilization of the legal professions to denounce the exhaustion at work and the lack of means of Justice.

“The death of Marie must challenge us, overwork, despair, are words that should not be associated with our mission to dispense justice. Yet we all know that the state of the courts and the workload of justice personnel are very difficult and make our mission almost impossible”, asks Sophie Ben Hamida, judge in Montpellier and union representative. “Are we going to continue to sacrifice some of us on the altar of judicial productivity, are we going to continue to accept such degraded working conditions, which not only harm the quality of our work but also directly threaten our health ?”.

“There are too many deaths”

“When colleagues fall, there is a link between working conditions, stress, exhaustion and pathologies that have irreversible consequences, there are too many illnesses, too many deaths”, denounces this magistrate. Hearings that end at 1 a.m., staff who sacrifice their holidays, deadlines not met in the processing of cases, it takes a year to go before the family court judge.

“We explain to you that the workforce is complete but they do not correspond to the real activity of justice!”, according to Sophie Ben Hamida. Other similar gatherings took place at the Court of Appeal and at the Cité Judiciaire rue de la Méditerranée.

A call for a strike has been launched for November 22.