The Council of State, France's highest administrative body, has rejected a man's bid to legalise the burial of his parents, who have been frozen in the hope they can one day be returned to life, a lawyer said today.
Attorney Alain Fouquet said he plans to take his client's case to the European Court of Human Rights. Remy Martinot's mother, Monique Leroy, has been frozen since 1984 in the family crypt at their chateau in Nueil-sur-Layon, near Saumur, 200 miles south-west of Paris, with no apparent objections from anyone.
But in 2002, when he respected the last wishes of his deceased father, Dr Raymond Martinot, to be frozen, authorities reacted.
They asked the son to transfer the two bodies from their special canister and place them in a standard tomb.
The matter went to the Council of State which issued what the lawyer called a "boldly conservative" decision.
Fouquet, the lawyer, cited in an interview an 1887 law specifying that "all adults can set the conditions of their funeral and mode of burial."
The Council of State side-stepped that law, agreeing that the type of burial "is intimately linked to private life" but adding that there can be "restrictions," notably "in the interest of health and public order."
Fouquet said that "there have never been problems of health or public order. After 22 years, we'd know about it."
AP