Eternit bis, the Supreme Court orders a new appeal for Schmidheiny

The outburst of a former worker

"It is a justice that eludes us, a true injustice. More time will pass and other cases will be prescribed." This is the comment of Nicola Pondrano, a former Eternit worker from Casale Monferrato, after the sentence which orders a new appeal process in the case. "We read the sentences, if necessary I will challenge them, it is certainly a big disappointment, especially for the offended parties and also for me. Our frustration is that we are once again unable to give justice to this drama", reported the civil party lawyer Giacomo Mattalia. The lawyer, explaining the decision of the Supreme Judges, said that "for a majority block of cases an annulment with postponement was ordered and therefore the appeal process will be repeated. Then there is a second group of cases for which there was an annulment without postponement because they were time-barred. And then there are two other cases of workers, who were time-barred during the judgement, for which the defendant's appeal was rejected, but for civil purposes only".

The procedural story

The trial returned to the Supreme Court after the supreme judges, last February, had ordered the referral to appeal due to the failure to translate into German the sentence with which in the second instance the entrepreneur had been sentenced to nine years and six months in prison for the deaths caused by asbestos produced by Eternit in Casale Monferrato, in the province of Alessandria. At first instance he was instead sentenced to 12 years.

The accusation

The entrepreneur, who had managed the Eternit plant in Casale from 1976 to 1986, is accused of aggravated multiple manslaughter for the death of 91 people, compared to the 392 victims contested in the first degree. A number that had already been reduced also due to the statute of limitations and some acquittals in other levels of judgement. The reading of today's sentence was attended by a delegation of family members of the victims of Casale Monferrato who this morning had organized a protest in front of the Court of Cassation with the banner "Justice-Research-Reclamation".