Seven years after the drama of November 2015 in Alsace, in which eleven people died after the derailment of a test train, dtwo investigating judges of the Paris court ordered a lawsuit against the SNCF, two of its subsidiaries as well as against three employees of these subsidiaries.
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“We wasted a lot of time.” These words are from Gérard Chemla, lawyer for around fifty civil parties in the fatal accident of the TGV Est in 2015. After the accident of a test TGV which left eleven dead and 42 injured in November 2015 in Eckwersheim , in Bas-Rhin, SNCF, two subsidiaries and three of their employees will be tried before the Paris Criminal Court. The three employees are “the person responsible for supervising conduct”the one who drove the motor car, and an employee of one of the subsidiaries.
For the lawyer for the civil parties, nothing justifies the length of the investigation in this case, the conclusions of the experts having been made a long time ago. “We will remember that the accident occurred on November 14, 2014, the day after the Paris attacks.says Gérard Chemla. The Paris attacks are today judged whereas, with regard to this accident of the TGV, the judicial information ends only now.
If the judges took their time, it was, according to them, so as not to refer anyone to court. For Gérard Chemla, however, they have taken a wrong turn: “I think the people who had organized the tests, who made the decisions, such as the speed, made mistakes and that these mistakes caused the accident.
“We would have liked to be confronted with all the people who failed. I find that quite disappointing.”
Gérard Chemla, civil party lawyerat franceinfo
As the judgment phase approaches, Gérard Chemla intends to show “the incredible unconsciousness of the tests carried out by the SNCF on this TGV-Est”. The SNCF did not wish to make any comment, for the moment.