Claiming to be Michelin Heir, Man Takes Case to Court

A man claiming to be a rightful heir to the Michelin family fortune has taken his case to French court. Jean-Philippe Rouchon, who was born in Puy de Dôme, France, near Michelin’s historic headquarters in Clermont-Ferrand, says he is the illegitimate son of Patrice Michelin, the grandson of André, who founded the company with his brother, Edouard, in 1888.

Rouchon, 43-year-old osteopath, claims his mother, Annick, who has accompanied him to court, had an affair with Patrice Michelin, resulting in his birth in 1969. According to reports in the Daily Telegraph, Rouchon has “provided the court with a blood test from 1969, a document proving that his alleged father provided his mother with subsistence for her child, and a letter Mr. Michelin sent his lawyer saying he had ‘given’ Mr. Rouchon’s mother a ‘superb baby.’” Yet when Patrice Michelin died in 2006, he made no mention of Rouchon in his will.
 
“I am thirsty for justice,” Rouchon told reporters prior to the opening of his case in a Paris courtroom. “This brings back very painful memories, it’s like a wound that won’t heal.” What will help him heal, he said, will be official recognition that he is a Michelin and part of a family of some 400 that he claims has “always ignored me and kept me at bay.

“I want (the rest of the family) to recognise that I am his son, to carry his name, for my mother and above my two children. And I want it to be said officially,” he told the newspaper. “The financial side is another matter. I have the right to my share just like the others.”

Rouchon claimed that Michelin lived with his mother “as man and wife for four or five years” after his birth, residing in a Michelin-family apartment outside Clermand-Ferrand, where the mother still lives. A verdict in the case is expected in a few weeks.       Tire Review