Summary
9 April 2010
Lalie Walker, the author of a crime thriller, is being taken to court because the action of her new book takes place in a well-known shopping emporium in Paris. The owners of March茅 Saint-Pierre say her book damages its reputation.
Reporter:
Hugh Schofield
The Montmartre skyline, Paris
Listen
Click to hear the report:
Report
It's a highly unusual legal situation where the author of a piece of fiction is taken to court because the action takes place in a particular locality, and the owners of that locality feel their name has been dragged through the mud. Yet that's what's happened in the case of Lalie Walker's book, Aux Malheurs des Dames.
The March茅 Saint-Pierre, where the murder story unfolds, is a well-known fabric store near Montmartre. In the book, staff members go missing as voodoo dolls are pinned to the walls and rumours swirl around the behaviour of the shop's managers.
In their plea, the real-life owners of the March茅 Saint-Pierre say it's a registered trade mark and that no one can write about it without prior permission. They say their image has been seriously harmed by the book, and they want damages of two million euros - more than two and a half million dollars.
The author Lalie Walker is mystified. "If you can't set stories in real-life places," she says, "then you might as well just give up."
Hugh Schofield, 大象传媒 News, Paris
Listen
Click to hear the vocabulary:
Vocabulary
- a piece of fiction
a story that is made-up, invented or not factual
- locality
place, location
- their name has been dragged through the mud
their reputation has been insulted by the things someone (here, the writer Lalie Walker) has said about them
- unfolds
happens, takes place
- fabric store
shop which sells material for making clothes, curtains etc.
- voodoo dolls
figures or models of people which are used in a type of religion involving magic and the worship of spirits
- rumours swirl around
people are talking a lot about interesting stories which may or may not be true
- real-life owners
the people who own the shop (as opposed to the characters in the book who own the shop)
- a registered trade mark
a particular name or logo for a product that a company has a legal right to use
- without prior permission
without getting the legal right to do something before doing it
