
Jeanne Pouchain doesn't exist. She's real, yes, and very much alive. She lives in Saint-Joseph, near the French city of Lyon, with her husband, Pierre-Jean. She has an adult son, a cat, and a penchant for cigarettes.
But according to the law, there is no such person; Jeanne Pouchain is a ghost.
The 58-year-old has spent the last five years tangled in a bizarre bureaucratic mix-up that saw her mistakenly declared dead.
The nightmare began in 2016 following a two-decade legal battle with a former employee of her cleaning business. The disgruntled worker was seeking compensation after losing her job; an event for which Pouchain's lawyers argue their client is not financially responsible.
The fight went through multiple courts to a 2016 appeals hearing, which, Pouchain has told media, she was not summoned for.
At that hearing, a lawyer reportedly told the court that Pouchain had died.
Despite there being no death certificate, her passing was somehow accepted as fact, and Pouchain's heirs (her husband and son) were ultimately ordered to pay 14,000 Euros (AUD$22,000) in damages to the former employee.
"It’s a crazy story," Pouchain's lawyer, Sylvain Cormier, told AFP. "I couldn’t believe it. I never thought that a judge would declare someone dead without a certificate. But the plaintiff claimed Mrs Pouchain was dead, without providing any proof and everyone believed her. Nobody checked."
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Pouchain claims that, at the time, she was oblivious to the ruling, that she had no idea the legal dispute had even returned to court.