Information Note on the Court’s case-law 218
May 2018
Laurent v. France - 28798/13
Judgment 24.5.2018 [Section V]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for correspondence
Interception and perusal by a police officer of hand-written notes handed over overtly by a lawyer to his clients: violation
Facts – While waiting for the outcome of a hearing before a judge, the two clients of the applicant (a lawyer) were required to wait under the supervision of a police escort. The applicant noted his professional contact details on a folded piece of paper, which he handed over openly to one of his two clients. The senior escorting officer then asked the client to show him the piece of paper. He opened it, read it, then handed it back. The applicant criticised the police officer for failing to respect the confidentiality of exchanges with his client. The same scene was then repeated with the other client. The applicant’s complaints alleging a breach of the confidentiality of correspondence were unsuccessful.
Law
Article 35 § 3 (b) (no significant disadvantage): The application involved a method of exchanging information on which the Court had not yet been required to rule. In consequence, the Government’s objection alleging no significant disadvantage was dismissed.
Article 8: The interception by a police officer of notes written by the applicant – a lawyer – and handed over to his clients amounted to interference in the right to respect for the confidentiality of correspondence between a lawyer and his or her clients. The interference pursued the legitimate aim of preventing disorder and crime.
At the time of the interference the applicant’s clients had been deprived of liberty and were under police escort. It followed that monitoring of exchanges could not be totally excluded, but this could be carried out solely when the authorities had credible grounds to believe that the correspondence contained something unlawful.
The senior escorting officer had acted with the aim of preventing any dangerous or illegal act. However, the Government had not submitted any substantive reason capable of justifying the monitoring of the documents and did not maintain that they could have given rise to any particular suspicions. Furthermore, the applicant, in his capacity as a lawyer, had written and handed over the papers in question to his clients in full view of the senior escorting officer, without attempting to conceal his actions. In consequence, in the absence of any suspicion of an unlawful act, the interception of the relevant documents could not be justified. Equally, the content of the documents intercepted by the police officer was immaterial, given that, whatever its purpose, correspondence between lawyers and their clients concerned matters of a private and confidential nature. At every stage of the proceedings the domestic courts had held that while the events in issue did not merit a criminal prosecution, the senior escorting officer’s conduct had nonetheless amounted to a breach of the principle of uninhibited communication between a lawyer and his or her client.
Thus, the interception and perusal of the applicant’s correspondence with his clients, in his capacity as a lawyer, did not correspond to a pressing social need and had not therefore been necessary in a democratic society.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: finding of a violation sufficient in itself in respect of the non-pecuniary damage.
(See also Campbell v. the United Kingdom, 13590/88, 25 March 1992; Michaud v. France, 12323/11, 6 December 2012, Information Note 158; and the Factsheet on Legal professional privilege)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy