Bordeaux - A French appeals court on Tuesday overturned a conviction handed down on the state rail company SNCF for its role in the deportation of two Jewish men during World War II.
The administrative court of appeal in the southwestern city of Bordeaux decided that the case was outside its jurisdiction.
Administrative courts in France judge lawsuits brought against the state. But the appeals court said that SNCF is a legal entity in its own right, and therefore subject to the regular justice system.
SNCF's conviction last June by an administrative court in Toulouse was seen as a landmark ruling, and triggered some 1 800 similar requests for compensation.
The case centred on a suit brought by the family of Green party deputy Alain Lipietz, whose father and uncle were taken by train to an internment camp in Paris in May 1944. They both survived the war.
Some 76 000 Jews were deported from France during World War II, nearly all of whom died in extermination camps. Most were transported on the railway network.
Previous attempts to condemn the SNCF in criminal and civil courts having failed, the Lipietz plea rested on claims that the French state authorities, the police and the SNCF neglected their duty to provide services to citizens.
SNCF was ordered to pay 62 000 euros ($83 000 dollars), but lodged an appeal.
Gerard Boulanger, a lawyer representing other families who have filed suit against SNCF, deplored the appeals court's decision to quash the conviction.
"When people are put in cattle cars, it is not exactly commercial activity. The SNCF should be considered part of the public authority, because the people who were transported cannot be considered as customers," he said.
But Arno Klarsfeld, who represented civil plaintiffs at the 1998 deportations trial of Vichy official Maurice Papon, said the court's ruling was correct.
"It is a salutary decision because convicting SNCF diluted the responsibility of those who were genuinely guilty of crimes against humanity. The SNCF was a public body requisitioned by the state. It had no intention to take part in the deportations nor did it profit from them," he said.
Papon, who died earlier in 2007, was found guilty of helping organise the deportation of 1 560 Jews by rail from Bordeaux and sentenced to 10 years in jail.
The Lipietz family said it will now take the case to the State Council in Paris, which acts as France's highest administrative court. - AFP