Neighbour who complained about noisy cockerel in France ordered to pay €3,500
The complainant said the animal, which has since died, crowed too loudly and too often
Ricco the ‘noisy’ cockerel was killed by a fox in the days before a court decision ruled he would not have to be removed from his home (Image for illustration only)
Ioan Panaite / Shutterstock
A woman in rural southeast France is being fined €3,500 after taking her neighbours to court to complain about their ‘noisy’ cockerel named Ricco.
The complaint, which was first considered by the Bourgoin-Jallieu court in May, requested the cockerel be removed due to claims that it crows too loudly and too often, and also asked for €4,500 in damages from its owners.
Last Friday (July 4), the court ruled that it had no jurisdiction over the matter, but ordered the plaintiff to pay €2,000 in compensation for the préjudice moral (psychological harm) caused to her neighbours, and cover their €1,500 legal fees.
Ricco’s owners, Alexia and Franck Charreton have lived in the commune of Nivolas-Vermelle (Isère, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes) for 25 years.
The couple bought Ricco in 2019, however he was killed by a fox in the days before the court decision.
“Ricco was allowed to be there, he had the right to sing”, Ms Charreton told La Croix, assuring that a new cockerel would soon take his place. “The [court’s] crucial decision is a deterrent for all the litigious people who want to intimidate their neighbours,” she added.
“We dedicate this victory to our late little cockerel Ricco and to all his brothers. We are in the process of seeing how to use the money to be paid to us by our neighbour so that it can be of use to all the people in the situation we have experienced,” reads a statement on the online petition that gathered almost 35,000 signatures in support of Ricco’s victory.
The Charreton couple plan to “make a giant omelette” to celebrate the outcome with the local community, and as a tribute to Ricco.
‘Loi du coq Maurice’
Ricco is not the first cockerel to be caught up in legal battles.
After a string of quarrels over noisy roosters and animal sounds, cockerel crowing was recognised as a patrimoine sensoriel (sensory heritage) of the countryside - and therefore protected by French law since January 29, 2021.
The legislation is sometimes nicknamed the Loi du coq Maurice, after Maurice the cockerel from l’Ile d’Oléron, who hit headlines around the world in 2019 after being allowed to continue crowing following a neighbour dispute.
The law applies to noises in the open French countryside, but does not necessarily apply to urban spaces. This could have been problematic in Ricco’s case as his home village is classified as ‘semi-urban’ by the French statistics bureau INSEE.
Caruso the cockerel in the French village of Sallenôves (Haute-Savoie), Coco in Margny-lès-Compiègne in the Oise (Hauts-de-France), and Pitikok in the Hautes-Pyrénées were three more famous cockerel cases in recent years.
Read more: French crowing cockerel owner in court after neighbour’s complaint
Read more: Hamlet’s ‘noisy’ cockerel can continue crowing, rules French court
