Does expressing romantic feelings constitute sexual harassment? The Court of Appeals had to rule on the termination of the employee’s contract.
When love is unrequited, life at work can become very complicated, as evidenced by a nine-year legal battle between a dentist and his dental assistant. Dismissal, judicial termination, labor court, and even the Court of Appeals—nothing spared the employee in her battle against her boss. Hired on July 11, 2017, on a part-time permanent contract, she was responsible for the administrative management of the dental practice.
A year passed before the first incidents occurred. On July 23, 2018, the employer acknowledged that he was putting too much pressure on the employee. He apologized and said he wanted to prevent her from burning out. What a noble gesture. He wanted to be Prince Charming, showering her with declarations of love and begging her to stay at all costs. “I’ll become invisible if I have to, the shadow of your dog—why not? Please, stay—stay for the practice, stay for the patients, and stay for me, a little too,” the dentist wrote on May 7, 2019.
The employee does not share these romantic feelings and repeatedly rejects him. Despite this rejection, the dentist persists. Again and again. The employee is continually described as the ideal woman. On June 3, 2020, she sends a long message to her boss setting the record straight. She can no longer stand the compliments about her appearance and the invitations to go out on the weekends. “I would like to share a friendship, but I don’t see how. If we are to continue working together, we will have to let go of a romantic relationship that we will not have and that we never had,” she writes openly.
The situation takes a turn. “Generally speaking, sexual harassment is established when the victim has expressly refused any romantic relationship—or at the very least has never given consent—and the perpetrator persists in his actions. The perpetrator’s behavior is also a determining factor. In this case, the judges noted numerous guilt-inducing messages, genuine emotional blackmail, and erratic behavior—alternating between apologies, declarations of love, and suicide threats—making the classification as sexual harassment clear,” explains Benjamin Pierrot, a labor law attorney at the Strasbourg Bar.
The dental assistant went on sick leave on March 18, 2021. Contrary to all expectations, on April 9, 2021, she received a summons to a preliminary interview regarding a disciplinary action that could lead to dismissal. And as a reversal of fortune never comes alone, the dentist terminated the dismissal proceedings on May 20, 2021, without any specific justification. “Withdrawing from disciplinary proceedings is not wrongful in itself. The purpose of the preliminary hearing is precisely to facilitate a discussion, and it may well result in the proceedings being dropped if the employee’s explanations are deemed satisfactory,” the attorney explains.
However, this was the last straw for the employee, who decided on June 2, 2021, to file a claim with the Labor Court seeking judicial termination of her contract. This procedure allows, among other things, for the employer to be ordered to pay various sums. The assistant was subsequently declared unfit for work by the occupational physician on November 22, 2021. Since the employer could not reassign her, she was dismissed for unfitness on December 20, just a few days before Christmas.
Almost exactly one year later, the Montpellier Labor Court ruled in favor of the judicial termination at the dentist’s fault, and he appealed. The Montpellier Court of Appeals upheld the termination as the employer’s fault in a decision dated January 21, 2026. The judge found sexual harassment in the form of romantic pressure, as well as a breach of the employment contract due to managerial instability, particularly regarding the dismissal procedure that was suddenly abandoned.
“In this case, allegations of insults were raised but not proven. It was therefore the unfounded nature of the grievances, combined with the specific context—particularly the employee’s vulnerability—that led the judges to find unfair conduct,” concludes Benjamin Pierrot. Including all compensation, the dentist was ordered to pay €26,855.50 to his former assistant. Enough to make one’s teeth grind.
