A French bus company is pursuing a suit against a group of cleaning ladies because they found a better way to get to work:

…a group of French cleaning ladies who organised a car-sharing scheme to get to work are being taken to court by a coach company which accuses them of “an act of unfair and parasitical competition”.

The women, who live in Moselle and work five days a week at EU offices in Luxembourg, are being taken to court by Transports Schiocchet Excursions, which runs a service along the route. It wants the women to be fined and their cars confiscated.

Two years ago a business tribunal threw out the company’s case. It is now pursuing the women in a higher court, claiming that their action has cost it €2m (£1.4m).

The women explained that for many years cleaners used the TSE line for the 40-minute ride across the border, which cost them €110 (£76) a month.

“Using our cars is quicker and at least twice as cheap. And on the bus we didn’t have the right to eat or even to speak,” said Martine Bourguignon. Odette Friedmann added: “In the evening instead of coming to get us at 9.30pm the bus would arrive at 10.30pm. If you made any comment to the driver you’d get a mouthful of abuse.”

The author of a Groklaw article entitled “The Stupidest Lawsuit Since The World Began” says “If I’ve understood the French, their theory of the bus company claim is that it was given the exclusive right to transport folks on that route.”

It sounds like the bus company’s business plan is elegant:

1) obtain monopoly

2) provide lousy service

3) sue any customer who uses an alternative

Although not as brilliant as “cut unemployment by forcing companies to pay people the same for less work” (1), (2), this plan does have the distinction of combining the worst elements of socialist (monopoly), French (lousy service), and American (litigate!) economies. And people say France has lost its competitive edge?

In North America, cable companies are examining the claims carefully, in the hopes of using them as a model.

H/T: Catallarchy, who h/t’s Volokh Conspiracy.

NB: Comments in Volokh Conspiracy note that while a situation like this has not happened here in the States (yet), taxi licenses and the like do restrict the supply of what could be a thriving market of informal taxi and van services. That would only help the poor. Yet cities would rather reap taxi license income than develop a more pro-competition regulatory plan.

Technorati Tags: big business, France

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2005 at 12:09 am by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under France, We Taunt You, How Not To Succeed In Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.