31 ms·

This story is missing the key detail on who/how/what the process was for declaring her dead. The journalist needed to go the extra step here and didn't.

• Tijdreiziger 5y ago
  No, it's in the article: > Later, Pouchain’s lawyer, Sylvain Cormier, tells me the solicitor’s letter informing Pouchain the industrial tribunal case was being dropped was probably a phoney pause, while Mme H’s lawyer drew breath to relaunch the case. Sometime afterwards, the case returned to court – where it was said that Pouchain had died and that her “heirs” would be asked to settle. “This should not have happened,” Cormier says. > [...] > “When Mme Pouchain first told me her story, I found it hard to believe,” says Cormier. “I said, ‘It’s just not possible.’ But I read the files and it is – everything she told me was unbelievable but perfectly true. It appears there was no certificate of death, it was just taken on someone’s word. Nobody checked.”
• toss1 5y ago
  um, about the 8th paragraph: "The letter informed her that a lawyer in a court case relating to her cleaning business had told the court that she had died, aged 53, in February 2016. Somehow, this unverified claim – there was no official death certificate, how could there be? – was allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged." Then further down: "“It was a trap, an ambush. She couldn’t win the proceedings while I was alive, so she had me declared dead,”" It appears that the woman (or attorney) suing her for some employment error claimed she was dead to be able to get an advantage in their lawsuit, and to be able to go after her "heirs".