HURBAIN v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT B. Case-law of France’s highest courts 1. Judgment of 12 May 2016 of the Court of Cassation, First Civil Division 94. The French Court of Cassation was called upon to rule on an action, brought in 2010 on the basis of section 38 of the Act of 6 January 1978 on data processing, files and civil liberties and on Article 1382 of the Civil Code, with a view to the removal of the applicants’ personal data, which were subject to automatic processing on the website LesEchos.fr. The two applicants, traders who had been penalised in 2003 by the Financial Markets Board, sought the removal of their names from an article published in 2006 and subsequently made available free of charge in the archives of the newspaper Les Echos, after the Conseil d’État had altered the decision revoking their traders’ licences and banning them from practising as traders, replacing it with a reprimand. The Court of Cassation held as follows: “However, in finding – on grounds that have not been challenged – that the fact of requiring a news outlet either to remove from the website on which past articles are archived, which cannot be equated with publication of a database of judicial decisions, the information itself contained in one of those articles (in a situation where the removal of the full names of the persons concerned renders the article devoid of interest), or to restrict access to it by altering the usual listing, goes beyond the restrictions that may be imposed on freedom of the press, the Court of Appeal gave a proper legal basis for its decision, notwithstanding the subsidiary grounds challenged in the first limb.” 2. Judgment of 17 February 2021 of the Court of Cassation, First Civil Division 95. This case concerned the legal representative of a company specialising in nutritional supplements who had been found guilty in a final judgment delivered in 2009 of illegally practising as a pharmacist, selling medicines without marketing authorisation and breaching the rules on advertising medicines and, in a 2011 judgment, of tax fraud and failure to keep proper accounts. The latter conviction was quashed by a 2019 ruling of the Criminal Convictions Review Court. In 2016 the applicant, who had discovered by chance that a page existed on a particular website reporting on his criminal convictions and containing a hyperlink to his father’s death notice published on a separate site, and who alleged that the publication of that information breached his right to privacy, brought proceedings against the author of the web page in question under Article 9 of the Civil Code (right to respect for private life) seeking compensation for damage and the removal of the page. In the Court of Cassation proceedings the applicant complained that the Court of Appeal, in dismissing his action, had merely observed in the statement of facts that the website in question was purportedly aimed at discussing “irrational beliefs” and addressed topics such as conspiracy 37