Can you objectively characterize someone as “scum”? According to a French court, you can! The court heard a lawsuit brought by France and Bayern Munich striker Franck Ribéry against RMC Sport’s Daniel Riolo, who published a 2013 book called Racaille Football Club (“Scum Football Club”) about various problems with the French national team ahead of the 2010 World Cup, including criminal charges against Ribéry and teammate Karim Benzema that they paid for sex with an underage prostitute (which they were eventually cleared on in 2014 after she said she didn’t tell them her age). Riolo’s book used plenty of inflammatory terms about Ribéry, but the judge in this case ruled they were used “objectively”:
In his book, Riolo accused Ribéry of being one of the main perpetrators of the discontent within the squad and used several derogatory words to describe him, including “scarface”, “scum” and “gangster”. The Bayern forward, who is currently out injured, sued the journalist and his publisher Hugo & Cie for damages but a judge ruled this week that the terms had been used “objectively” and that the lawsuit was “reckless”.
Ribéry was subsequently ordered to pay a total of €5,000 to Riolo and his publisher, with the judge citing Roselyne Bachelot, the French sports minister, who during the 2010 World Cup referred to some of the French team as “gangsters”.
The 32-year-old’s lawyer Carlo Alberto Brusa said he would appeal against the decision. “My client is outraged that the 17th chamber of the court has described this as an abuse of procedure as he was simply exercising judicial means available to him to request that his fundamental rights are respected.”
It’s hard to think of exactly how someone can objectively be called scum; Ribéry certainly isn’t “a film or layer of foul or extraneous matter that forms on the surface of a liquid,” “refuse or offscourings,” or “scoria” (which is defined as “Metallurgy. the refuse, dross, or slag left after melting or smelting metal”), so it seems likely Riolo is going for “a low, worthless, or evil person,” which seems like a rather subjective judgement. We don’t know the exact context in the book, but this does seem like an unusual thing to term objective. Still, for now at least, Riolo seems free to call Ribéry scum, regardless of if he’s a layer of foul or extraneous matter on the surface of a liquid or not.
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