Editions K&B, a modest French publishing company with a low profile until it decided to produce a voodoo doll of Nicolas Sarkozy, is now set to make a fortune at the President’s expense. They have ordered another 100,000 of the dolls, the original 20,000 having completely sold out, mainly via the French Amazon site.
This follows a ruling by the French appeals court that the doll can continue to be sold so long as the packaging displays a prominent warning that sticking pins in his effigy is an affront to the President’s dignity. As doing precisely that is the whole point of the purchase, most political commentators have concluded that the judges’ decision is a sharp rebuke to the President for going to law in the first place. The court also awarded him the lowest possible damages of 1 Euro.
Sarkozy, who keeps his lawyer Thierry Hertzog busy with a series of libel actions, originally claimed that the doll infringed his “image rights”. A lower court hearing refused to block their sale, concluding the doll fell within the right to “free speech and humour”. The two rulings are believed to be the first time a sitting French President has lost a lawsuit.
www.amazon.fr
From our December 2008 e-newsletter
