On October 26, SNCF was fined 300,000 euros for neglecting its maintenance mission.
Article written by
Posted
Reading time : 1 min.
She doesn’t want to do “relive this drama” to the victims. The SNCF announced Monday, November 7 to AFP not to appeal its conviction for homicides and involuntary injuries in the Brétigny-sur-Orge (Essonne) rail disaster of 2013. After an eight-week trial, the SNCF was sentenced on October 26 to a fine of 300,000 euros, found guilty of having neglected its maintenance mission.
Fatal negligence: on July 12, 2013, a train derailed at Brétigny-sur-Orge station, south of Paris, killing seven people and injuring hundreds of others, psychologically and/or physically. On Monday, the SNCF told AFP not to appeal “out of respect for the victims first”. “We are relieved that the SNCF is not appealing“, reacted to AFP Thierry Gomes, who lost his parents in the accident and who chairs the association Mutual aid and defense of the victims of the Brétigny disaster (EDVCB). “After nine years of proceedings, the majority of victims hope to turn the page.”
“Bound their wounds”
The release of the SNCF Réseau (ex-RFF) track manager leaves “doubtful” many civil parties, comments Gérard Chemla, lawyer for a dozen of them and for the National Federation of Victims of Attacks and Collective Accidents (Fenvac). However, the trial was “extremely respectable” and “enabled victims to be recognized in their status as victims”, he said. “We can think that the absence of a call from the SNCF will allow the victims to heal their wounds, because there is a fundamental exhaustion”he continued.
In its sentencing decision against the SNCF, the Evry Criminal Court described a “fatal conjunction of negligence”. First of all, “the lack of follow-up by the agents” of a fundamental part of the point and crossing in question. Secondly, “control failure” of the work of agents by their managers, in a context of “trivialization of the emergency”. Result: a crack detected in 2008 in the track device was poorly followed for five years, the court ruled. The SNCF, which had asked for his release considering that the accident was unforeseeable, maintains that the judgment does not impute to him “no systematic, structural or organizational fault” but “a single fault of negligence”.