The French news magazine L'Express reports (in French) that a labor union had petitioned a Paris-area court for relief under a law that governs the use of the French language in the workplace. Wire services report (in French) that the court has ruled in the claimant''s favor.

For this commentator, the case is better viewed as a business problem than a legal problem.

The claimant relied on a bright-line rule in French labor law: an employer must provide employees with a French-language version of any document necessary for the performance of their duties. (There are limited exceptions for documents received from abroad or intended for foreigners.)

In this case, defendant Europ Assistance had not provided a French-language version of Oracle's Hyperion Financial Management product. Europ Assistance reportedly now faces a € 5,000 per day injunction if it fails to do so.

The courts do not consider compliance costs. Businesses should, and if they did would probably choose to address this issue elsewhere than before the courts.

How much does it cost to prepare a French-language guide to the program? Hasn't Oracle already prepared such a guide? How do these costs compare to the cost of litigation (including the cost of diverting management attention from other matters), and especially the cost of poisoned labor relations?

In this case, Europ Assistance reportedly already fought (and lost) a similar suit in 2007, and faced this suit only after unfavorably evaluating an employee's performance. Who knows whether this has happened at Europ Assistance, but there is a real risk, especially in a multinational organization, that the employer will offer troubled employees a starring role in a dramatized version of Asterix vs. Rome (or David vs. Goliath).