Asbestos: the victims do not waive the criminal trial despite two dismissals
Asbestos is the cause of occupational diseases and cancers and many employee deaths. But the cases of Eternit, on several sites in France, and Ferrodo-Valeo, in Condé-sur-Noireau (Calvados), cannot give rise to a criminal trial, decide the investigating magistrates. Lawyers and victims' associations denounce the will of the State and Justice "to bury" these cases and appeal against this decision. Some are launching an unprecedented procedure in the form of a direct quote.
A toxic material long used in France without great caution, whether to be mixed with cement (Eternit) or for the manufacture of brake pads and clutch discs (Ferrodo-Valeo) because of its insulating qualities, asbestos causes , by inhaling its fibers, numerous diseases such as cancer of the pleura, or mesothelioma (read our article on a book evoking the union battle for better protection at the Condé-sur-Noireau plant).
The dangerousness of asbestos, which was banned in France at the beginning of 1997, is therefore attested. Andeva, the national association for the defense of asbestos victims, estimates the number of deaths caused by this material at more than 100,000. "It is a carcinogen without threshold of harmlessness whose toxic effects are at work from the first exposure", the disease not being caused by "a one-off event" but by "a process of accumulation of inhaled fibers throughout the exhibition period, "Andeva recalls.
However, it is indeed in the name of "the impossibility of dating the intoxication of the plaintiffs" victims of asbestos that the magistrates who investigate the complaint against X, deposited in 1996 for poisoning, fatal blows, manslaughter and non-assistance to no one in danger, have just issued a surprising dismissal order in the Ferrodo-Valeo affair, the managers of the factories concerned no longer being indicted.
The expertise on which judges rely
To base their assessment, the judges rely on the 72-page expertise carried out in 2016-2017 at their request by two professors and a doctor (1). These specialists list the diseases for which the causal link with asbestos has been scientifically established. It's about :
asbestosis (pulmonary fibrosis);
pleural or pericardial plaques (pleural fibrosis);
benign exudative pleurisy or pleural effusion (fluid in the pleural cavity);
pleural thickening (a less frequent form of pleural fibrosis);
lung cancer;
mesothelioma and other primary pleural tumors;
cancer of the larynx;
ovarian cancer.
They add that the environmental cause (i.e. external to work) cannot be ruled out for these pathologies and that the latency period, i.e. the time between exposure and diagnosis, is very long, over 15 years in almost all cases, but up to 40 or 60 years for cancer of the pleura, for example, a disease that is almost always fatal (without treatment, these doctors specify, death occurs 4 to 8 months after diagnosis).
Impossible to estimate at individual level the possibilities of occurrence of an occupational disease
In particular, to the next question asked by the judges ("specify whether it is possible to determine, at the time of diagnosis, the date on which the person was poisoned by asbestos fibers, and if so, indicate with which degree of precision "), a question that victims' associations consider irrelevant in view of the nature of asbestos diseases, the experts answer that it is impossible, when the diagnosis of an asbestos disease is known, "to deduce with precision neither the moment of the exposure at the origin of the disease, nor the moment of the contamination". The experts write however that the reconstruction of the professional history of the employee "can give indications as to the probable date of the exposure".
The experts finally consider that it is possible to estimate at the level of the population the possibilities of the occurrence of occupational diseases following exposure to asbestos, but this cannot be with "absolute precision". On the other hand, they consider that this estimate "is not possible at the individual level".
In criminal matters, we need certainty, say judges
From this expertise, the judges deduce the impossibility of bringing together the elements constituting the offenses of homicide and unintentional injuries, for lack of having carried out "extensive investigations" to establish with certainty a causal link "between a fault attributable to a specific person and the damage suffered by the complainant ". And as it seems "impossible to date the intoxication of the complainants", while they indicate
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