France's court of last resort (Cour de Cassation) has overruled a verdict by the Court of Versailles (Cour d'Appel), which had ruled that a temporary employee cannot sign redundancy papers for permanent employees because he or she is not a member of staff.

The temporary employee in question worked as interim personnel director for a French company, which had to make several people redundant due to economic hardship.

After their redundancy, the ex-employees claimed that the redundancy notification they had received was invalid because it was signed by a person whose salary is not paid by the company and who is therefore, as an outsider to the company, not a member of staff.

The Court of Versailles decided that redundancy notices have to be signed by the employer and cannot be signed by a person who is an outsider by the company. The redundancies were therefore declared invalid.

However, the company decided to appeal to the Court of Last Resort, which overruled the previous judgment on 2 March 2011 by declaring that an agency temporary employee is not an outsider to the company, which is his final employer. The interim personnel director was therefore perfectly entitled to sign the redundancy notifications. As a consequence, the redundancies were declared as in line with French law.