Gustave Eiffel never went to prison because in June of 1893 the Cour de Cassation, the supreme court of France, overruled the verdict of the Court of Appeal. Eiffel, Fontane, Cottu, Ferdinand and Charles de Lesseps were all acquitted on a technical ground: the summonses for their arrest, issued November 21, 1892, had come more than three years after the most recent of their alleged crimes and so, the court ruled, they were entitled to immunity under the statute of limitations.
