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Paris - A court in France on Tuesday threw out an appeal by a relative of German Jews killed by the Nazis who had claimed giant cosmetics group L'Oreal fraudulently acquired a piece of land that belonged to the family in Germany.
Legal action against L'Oreal for extortion and receiving stolen property had been brought originally in December 2001 by Edith Rosenfelder, the daughter of a Jewish couple who died in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.
Rosenfelder had accused the cosmetics group of buying the property via its German subsidiary despite knowing that it had been acquired fraudulently.
The land, on which L'Oreal built the headquarters of a subsidiary and which was sold by the group in 1991, was owned the Rosenfelder family, which had escaped Germany for France in the 1930's after Nazi persecution.
While in France a family member gave power of attorney to an intermediary to sell the property. Rosenfelder claimed the power of attorney was acquired under duress.
L'Oreal had always argued that the Rosenfelder family had been compensated in 1951 by the Jewish Restitution Successor Organisation, a body set up after the war to compensate victims of the Nazis, and that the claim was therefore invalid.
Rosenfelder's daughter Monica Waitzfelder, who was present when the appeal court made its decision said she was stunned by the judgement.
"We are not important people and L'Oreal are very important," she said, adding that she was now considering taking her case to the European Court for Human Rights.
"I really ask myself if France is a country of human rights or if it is the country for the rights of people with money and power," said a tearful Waitzfelder.
L'Oreal refused to comment on the ruling.
