I’m wondering if anyone might know the answer to this question in relation to French legal process.
If a person is taken before a French criminal court charged with an offense and is found ‘Not Guilty’, can the defendant recover their legal costs, either from the justice system itself, or from the person that made the wrongful complaint against them in the first place ?
Basically, it depends.
and this link:
Robert, the suspense is killing me. I have to ask. What is going on with your elbow in that photo?
Hi Helen.
I was sitting outside scratching an insect from my ear while concentrating on a map, and was completely unaware that the photo was being taken. I have very few ‘selfies’, and so when I joined SF and was asked to submit a photo, that picture was the only one that I could conveniently find. I suppose that I should get around to submitting an updated photo at some time when I have nothing better to do. (Don’t hold your breath though.) 
Thanks for that. Very helpful, even though the recovered amount will be at ‘Legal Aid’ rates it would be better than nothing. However, being acquitted of a malicious complaint and then left to at least some extent out of pocket for defense costs is bound to leave a bitter taste.
So no chance of a private prosecution for out of pocket costs after an acquittal ?
I honestly don’t know. However, I suspect that the cost of bringing such a prosecution may well be considerable, if indeed it is even possible, so unless the sum for outstanding defense costs was very large it may well be economically inadvisable.
An acquittal in a criminal case is different to a finding in a civil case. It means there was insufficient evidence for a conviction: it doesn’t say anything about the complainant’s character or that the complaint was necessarily vexatious.
Even if it were possible, which is not necessarily a given, you would spend in excess of several thousand Eur trying to prove that you have a “préjudice subi” greater than anything the penal rules of procedure can provide for. Given that even Art. 700 NCPC is often stingy when it comes to recovering costs, it almost certainly isn’t worth fighting over, unless you can afford to be pricipled and still end up losing, or at best winning an award that represents only a fraction of what you spent.
Gotta be honest I struggle with the little I know about French justice and am surprised at the relative ineffectiveness (as I perceive it so far) of consumer protections in F., compared to my experience in UK and what I perceive to be similar effectiveness to UK, in Germany.
Perhaps there are advantages I will eventually come across in the French system.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that you can’t collect € due from a consumer in France (Code Civil?) if a business hasn’t invoiced them for two + years, as compared to six (Limitations Act) in the UK. I am in exactly that position, as mentioned in a recent thread. This is regarding the rental of an EV battery that Renault have failed to invoice me for over 3+ years. €4k in unbilled rent is seemingly being written off.