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A trial described as the biggest health and safety case ever heard in a European court ended on 13 February 2012 after almost three years of hearings. The Court of Turin sentenced two executives from the asbestos manufacturer Eternit S.p.A. to 16 years each in prison and ordered them to pay damages of €95 million. They were found guilty of causing an environmental disaster through their negligence and of knowingly failing to introduce adequate health and safety measures.
Eternit opened its first asbestos production plant in Italy, the biggest in Europe, in 1907 at Casale Monferrato in Piemonte. Later, complexes were opened at Cavagnolo in Piemonte, Rubiera in Emilia Romagna, and Bagnoli in the province of Naples.
Although it has been known since 1962 that asbestos dust causes asbestosis and malignant mesothelioma, Eternit only closed its last Italian plant in 1986. Throughout the plants’ production life, an enormous quantity of asbestos dust was dispersed into the atmosphere through factory chimneys that had no protective filter. The countryside, communities and water supplies around the plants were contaminated. Within the plants, workers were given no protection and were never informed of the health risks.
The trial of the two men, billionaire Swiss businessman Stephan Schmidheiny, 64, and the Belgian baron Jean Louis Marie Ghislain de Cartier De Marchienne, 89, began on 6 April 2009. Initially 5,000 people and institutions had sought to bring civil actions, although the number dropped a little as some accepted out-of-court offers of compensation. Those that remained (relatives of victims who had died of asbestos-related diseases, the ill, local authorities and regional organisations, various associations and trade unions) were represented by more than 100 lawyers.
The unions that filed the lawsuit at sectoral, territorial and national level were the General Confederation of Italian Workers (CGIL), the Italian Confederation of Workers’ Trade Unions (CISL) and the Union of Italian Workers (UIL).
Described by prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello as the ‘biggest trial regarding health and safety ever to have taken place’, it finally concluded on 13 February after 70 hearings.
The ‘first degree’ sentence (each case goes through three trials in the Italian legal system and the sentence is declared definitive only after the third trial) condemned the accused to 16 years each in prison, after they were found guilty of knowingly having provoked an environmental disaster in the areas where Eternit had opened plants, and of not having taken any health and safety measures to protect workers.
Compensation of €80 million will go to the families of the victims, various institutions in the areas involved, to the National Institute for Industrial Accident Insurance (INAIL), and a number of community associations and trade unions.
The sentence, however, takes into account a statute of limitations that excludes compensation for asbestos contamination at the Rubiera and Bagnoli plants. The prosecutor has declared that the Bagnoli and Rubiera cases will be included in a second lawsuit in which the Eternit managers will, this time, be accused of murder.
The Eternit trial represents a revolution in workers’ rights, due to its emphasis on the aspect of criminal intent in the case. In April 2011, the managers at the ThyssenKrupp industrial group were found to have acted with criminal intent in the events that led to the deaths of seven workers in an accident at a steel plant in December 2007 (IT0801039I). In the Eternit trial, for the first time, the concept of criminal intent was applied to occupational diseases rather than workplace accidents.
The length of the trial was due to the large number of asbestos victims, institutions and other claimants. The trial was characterised by more stringent procedures in matters regarding health and safety in the workplace, and will act as a point of reference for future trials.
The Confederal Secretary of CGIL, Vincenzo Scudiere, hopes that the sentence will be ‘a warning to people who continue to believe that Italy can be competitive without guaranteeing the health and safety of its workers and citizens’.
The General Secretary of Fistel-CISL, Fulvio Giacomassi, has asked the government to set up a bargaining table to discuss the problems related to health and security of asbestos, discuss the solidarity fund for asbestos victims and the decontamination of the affected areas.
For Paolo Carcassi, Confederal Secretary of the UIL, the sentence represents ‘a concrete and civilised step forward for the victims, but it will also be useful in the future when establishing the balance between production and health and safety’.
The lethal nature of asbestos is illustrated by statistics from the municipality of Casale Monferrato, the area surrounding Eternit’s first Italian factory. In this area alone, there have been more than 1,700 deaths of residents and former workers. In the 48 municipalities surrounding Casale, about 50 people fall ill every year with asbestos-linked problems such as asbestosis, pulmonary fibrosis, pulmonary plaques, tumour of the larynx, mesothelioma and lung cancer.
It has been estimated that the number of victims in Italy will peak between 2015 and 2018, as those exposed to asbestos in the 1970s and 1980s start to fall ill.
Asbestos production has been a disaster in Europe and in other parts of the world, such as Brazil and Canada, asbestos is still manufactured. According to the World Health Organisation, 107,000 people die each year as a result of asbestos contamination, and more than 125 million are currently exposed to asbestos in the workplace. It has been estimated that in the first 30 years of the new millennium, there will be 500,000 deaths in western Europe due to asbestos exposure.
Vilma Rinolfi, Cesos