Meung-sur-Loire

A court has ruled that a French man who suffered a fatal heart attack while having adulterous sex on a business trip was the victim of a workplace accident. The engineer, identified only as Xavier X., died in his hotel in the Loire in 2013. In a long-running legal case, his employer argued that although the man was staying at the hotel as part of a business trip, he was not in the course of his professional duties when he joined a “complete stranger” in her room, and that it was therefore not obliged to compensate his family over his death.

But last week, it emerged that earlier this year, an appeals court in Paris had agreed with the state insurance provider, that the sex was “an act of normal life, like taking a shower or eating a meal”, and that the man had been entitled to protection over the course of the “whole mission”.  (reported in The Week, 21 September 2019).

I have an idea for the US House of Representatives that would give us a rest from the endless angst and horrible news of the past months:  pass a law that compensates American families for the deaths of husbands and fathers while caught in flagrante delicto on official trips in business hotels.  It could be a wake-up call, especially for the more sanctimonious people claiming to be christians, and who, I suspect ( but can’t prove) partake like other types.  Epicureans, of course, wouldn’t dream of such goings- on, but most of them are out of a job, so they don’t stay in business hotels where ladies of dubious virtue hang out. (just joking!)