At last Maurice the rooster has something to crow about. A court has ruled that France’s most famous cock can carry on with his dawn chorus, in a legal case that has pitted town against country.
On Thursday, a tribunal rejected a couple’s complaint about the bird’s early morning crowing and ordered them to pay €1,000 (£897) in damages to Maurice’s owner, Corinne Fesseau.
“I’m speechless. We certainly ruffled their feathers,” Fesseau said outside the hearing. “It’s a victory for all those who are in my situation. I hope this will be a precedent for the others. Everyone will now be protected: the church bells, the frogs … why not a Maurice law to protect all rural noises.”
Julien Papineau, the defence lawyer for Fesseau and Maurice, said they had won because: “Under French law you have to prove there is a nuisance, and this was not done.”
The dispute between Fesseau and her neighbours on the Île d’Oléron, western France, has taken two years to resolve. Two retired farmers with a second home on the island complained that Maurice was making an abnormal racket when he crowed at 6.30am and was disturbing the peace during their holidays.
They wanted the bird removed from his home or made to shut up, which triggered an “I am Maurice” support campaign on social media.
During a hearing in July, the plaintiffs were described as quiet people, aged 65 and 70, of modest income. The pair had bought a second home on the island in 2004, long before Maurice hatched in 2017. They were not in court because of the media interest in the case, their lawyer said, but they asked the court to rule that the noise had to stop.
The case was seen as symbolic of the clash between those living in rural areas who have long kept animals or rung church bells and those from urban areas of France or abroad who have bought second homes in the countryside.
On Tuesday, a court in Dax, south-west France, a traditional duck and geese rearing region, heard a complaint about the noise from a flock of 50 birds being raised in a neighbour’s garden.
In the Dordogne, a couple faces legal action because of the croaking of frogs in their garden pond, and in Beausset in the Var, Provence, holidaymakers have angered the local mayor by suggesting he kill the cicadas because they make too much noise.
In 1995, faced with a similar case that led to a death notice being served on a rooster, a French appeal court declared it was impossible to stop the species from crowing. “The chicken is a harmless animal, so stupid that nobody has succeeded in training it, not even the Chinese circus,” the judgment read.
Defence lawyers argued Maurice’s crowing was not “abnormal noise”. Legal arguments focused on whether Saint-Pierre d’Oléron, where Maurice lives and where the 7,000-strong local population swells to 35,000 in summer, could be described as “rural”.
Vincent Huberdeau, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, rejected the idea that Maurice was a “town v country” issue. “The rooster, the dog, the car horn, the music … it’s about noise,” he said during the hearing. “It’s not a row between bourgeois and rural dwellers.” He did not say if the couple would appeal against the court’s decision.
Bruno Dionis du Séjour, a retired farmer and mayor of the village of Gajac in south-west France has proposed a solution to the chorus of complaints about animal noises – he has asked the government to declare them part of France’s heritage, giving them state protection.