After the death of a worker killed during a fall from a roof on the site of the sports hall of Javron-les-Chapelles, in the North-Mayenne in January 2020, the company manager who employed him appeared this Thursday for manslaughter before the Laval Criminal Court. The issue of safety on the site was raised because the safety nets installed on the roof were not compliant. The defendant, a 54-year-old Angevin, was in hospital at the time of the incident following an accident and was not present at the scene. So the major question during this hearing, and which each party tried to clarify, is to know Who is responsible.
Was there any delegation of power?
While being bedridden at that time since an accident in October 2019, the defendant was not on site to give instructions. He therefore, more or less, left the responsibility to his other foreman to supervise. More or less because he doesn’t really know “Who was in charge at that time”, he said at the bar. Was it his supervisor? Its design office manager, “who had already done it a little”adds the defendant? “I imagine they saw together”he asks himself.
This point seems ambiguous for the court who wants to know who has not respected the security measures of the protective nets on the roof. Those used were only designed for a slope of less than ten degrees, whereas the slope noted by the site architect is thirty degrees. So they weren’t suitable. “Mister does not assume, he says he has given a delegation of power but obviously this is not the case for sure” points out the lawyer for the family of the worker, who is a civil party and who is from the same family as the defendant. “When you are an employer, you have de facto responsibilities”adds the prosecutor, “it feels like it’s everyone’s fault but yours”.
The defense lawyer speaks on her side “of a drama” also for his client, since it was his half-brother who diedbut he was “simply totally unable to perform his duties”. This work supervisor, “the various testimonies of workers on site tell us that he was the one who managed things, that he was the project owner, he had all the prerogatives to carry out the work and my client was incapable of managing, but the problem is that this work supervisor, we have never heard of him”continues the lawyer.
And then “a delegation of power does not necessarily have to be oral or written”argues the defense, knowing that the security coordinator, who went to inspect the site a few days before the tragedy, had not noted any suspicious point but “he recognizes afterwards that he did not check the net installations in detail”ends the defense lawyer.
Decision reserved on March 17
The defense therefore refers to the works supervisoron site on the site that day, but who was not interviewed as part of this procedure, a works supervisor since dismissed from the company. We do not know the reason for the dismissal, the planned says that he dismissed him by text. The employee therefore attacked the company at the industrial tribunal and the decision has obviously already fallen since the lawyer for the civil parties mentioned this industrial tribunal decision in her pleadings. But the president and the defense were not aware of this decision. The document will therefore be added to the file and the decision was taken under advisement on March 17.
In any case, the prosecutor asked 12 month suspended sentence in its submissions against the defendant, as well as a fine of 20,000 euros and 50,000 euros in non-pecuniary damage for the victim’s family.