The metropolis of Lyon ordered to pay 600,000 euros to an employee after a suicide attempt

More than 14 years after his desperate action, Manuel G. obtained compensation from his employer. The metropolis of Lyon was ordered in August by the administrative court to pay a little more than 600,000 euros in damages to this head of a team of road workers who set himself on fire in his workplace during the summer of 2012. This action, which left him seriously disabled, was recognized as an accident on duty, the facts having occurred in the workplace. The liability, without fault, of his employer had been established by a previous judgment of the administrative court, in 2024.

“He committed this gesture due to pressure from his superiors,” his lawyer Lynda Lettat tells Le Figaro. It was 80% burned.” More than a decade after the events, he still bears significant scars. The medical expert report, delivered last fall, recognized temporary functional impairment, loss of quality of life and the usual joys of everyday life, temporary damage to pleasure and temporary sexual damage.

On the morning of July 12, 2012, Manuel G., 47 years old, just learned that he was being laid off for…