Burden of Proof for Occupational Disease

Extract

[...] Having as its exclusive object the taking in charge of the disease under the professional legislation, the decision of the social organization remains without incidence on the action in inexcusable fault. It is up to the judge seized to search himself if the affection has a professional character and if the victim has been exposed in conditions constitutive of such a fault. The second pillar of the reasoning lies in Article 1353 of the Civil Code. He who claims the execution of an obligation must prove it, and he who claims to be released must justify the fact that has extinguished the obligation. [...]

[...] Court of Cassation, 2nd Civil Chamber June 2026, No. 23-22.278 - Who bears the burden of proof for the link between the occupational disease and the activity performed in the service of the employer being sued when the employee was exposed to the risk with several successive employers? On June the Second Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation offered victims of occupational diseases a notable evidentiary relief by requiring the employer to prove that the pathology was not attributable to the activity performed in his company. [...]

[...] By a judgment of September the Nancy Court of Appeal rejects the demand. The judges of the fact estimated that it was up to the beneficiaries to establish the employee's exposure to asbestos dust during the disputed employment period and found that the produced certificates did not achieve this. Before the Court of Cassation, the beneficiaries and the Fund argued on the contrary that the employer who contested that the disease had been contracted at his service must provide proof. [...]

[...] Prudence nevertheless dictates waiting for future applications before seeing it as a general rule. B. A real severity for victims of delayed-effect pathologies The flip side of the coin is, however, easily visible. Asbestos cancers declare themselves twenty to forty years after exposure, at a time when the company has sometimes disappeared while direct witnesses have dispersed and workshop records have been destroyed. To require the patient or their heirs to prove exposure as old as this is, in many cases, to ask the impossible, even though the employer generally retains control of documents related to working conditions. [...]

[...] The presumption of professional origin attached to diseases of the table by Article L. 461-1 of the Social Security Code plays in the relationships with the fund. It does not, however, designate any specific employer and cannot replace the demonstration expected from the claimant. The shift in jurisprudence, to take up the selection criterion retained by the analysts of the JurisData base, thus proceeds less from a renunciation than from a reorganization of the contentious around the civilist logic of proof. [...]