No Leniency When You Violently Beat a Woman in Monaco

A Woman Bruised and Bleeding at the End of a Prolonged Beating

A terribly violent argument fueled by drunkenness. But there is no excuse for this accused man from Moscow to hit a woman. No, not even if this companion of six months provoked him verbally.

The man had returned drunk to his apartment in Monaco from a day at the beach. And the fight with his companion then started leaving her needing to be hospitalized, injured and bleeding after a 7 minute beating. The concierge of the building and the police testified to the appalling state of the victim.

The defence would admit to nothing. There was an excuse for every injury short of the man having done it – accusing the woman of a drunken fall and causing her own injuries.

The judge was not buying it. It is absolutely forbidden in Monaco that a man hit a woman.

The result was a lesser sentence than the prosecution demanded but a guilty verdict nonetheless with a six month suspended prison sentence and a 1000 euro fine.

Collision Alley: Missing Traffic Signal Leads to Victim in Hospital

Monaco typically has mega building projects in progress with thousands of vehicles passing them each day. At the same time large trucks need regular access to the building sites. The potential hazard of trucks criss-crossing with normal traffic is normally avoided by traffic lights and a one-way system for a short stretch near the site – and extra traffic guards when large trucks are servicing the building site. And usually the surrounding neighbourhood is warned of the building work that is taking place near-by.

Mistakes happen rarely but they do happen. One day the traffic lights by a work-site had not been placed correctly and the mistake went unobserved until two vehicles rapidly approached each other on what should have been a one-way system. One was a scooter and the rider dived off it to avoid collision – but in doing so ended up in hospital with a fractured knee. The driver of the car approaching her, a neighbour near the building site, was summoned to court. His defence was, of course, that there were no traffic signals and so he had driven completely unaware of any danger. The building-site made much of the fact that they had informed all neighbours in general of the traffic management around the site and that the car driver should have anticipated the danger.

The Court in the end did not accept it was the car driver’s fault. He had not hit the scooter. The building site managers had placed the signals incorrectly. And it was the scooter rider that had dived to avoid injury. So the Court reasoned that the case ought rightly to be between the scooter rider and the management of the building site who had made the error with the placing of the traffic signals. There will be a material civil claim pending related to the scooter rider’s injury to which the building site management will have to respond. The driver of the car was acquitted.