This article is a bit misleading. He didn't just have a boring job, they wanted to fire him but because of the labor law in France they couldn't easily do this, so they gave him nothing to do as a form of harassment to try to get him to quit (more details here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/02/frenchman-take... - he was "mise au placard"). This is similar to what got France Télécom in trouble for.

Can't say if this is the case, but due to harsh laws when trying to fire employees in Europe (sometimes having to pay years of salary), companies are known to use this tactic to get people to quit.

My mother worked in a bank and even 20 years ago I was told by her stories of some employees been assigned a desk in an empty room and pretty much no work until they quit (this was the time before Facebook and even phone/internet at work, so you didn't do anything else but look at empty papers/walls)

Passive income! /s

This is quite a peculiar ruling to say the very least, especially when the employee have not raised any complaints prior to suing at tribunal.

"the Paris Court of Appeal ruled that ‘bore out’ was indeed a form of moral harassment."

That's... interesting to say the least. On the other hand, such a ruling might encourage companies to adopt more flexible hours for employees to only do work when needed. I imagine it would have more of an impact in office jobs where a lot of work can just be done remotely from home. That said, you'd have thought this employee would've been let go early on if they didn't really need him.