Owners, trustees and even experts, directly or indirectly linked to the fatal collapses of 2018, asked the Marseille criminal court not to be convicted in this extraordinary trial which ends on Wednesday.
The lawyers of the main defendants in the fatal collapses on rue d’Aubagne, in Marseille, pleaded Monday and Tuesday for acquittal, passing the buck or shifting responsibility onto those absent from the trial.
“The court is not a forum, it does not deal with substandard housing”began to explain Me Christophe Bass, the lawyer for the trustee of 65 rue d’Aubagne, who collapsed on November 5, 2018, killing eight people.
For him, the Liautard cabinet “did his job even if his proposals were rejected by the co-owners”. But for Me Pierre Ceccaldi is “a heresy” of having prosecuted co-owners of 65 rue d’Aubagne who had not been prosecuted during the investigation but were summoned to appear in court by civil parties.
“Modesty”
For the lawyer, it was done “trial of intent” on an alleged “greed” of his client, Xavier Cachard, owner, lawyer for the trustee and also at the time regional elected official.
He certainly does not “expressed his feelings” during the seven weeks of hearing but it is by “modesty”defended Me Ceccaldi, believing that there was no “Nothing” to condemn him.
The prosecutor demanded the heaviest sentence against him: five years in prison, three of which were closed, estimating that the co-owners had “knowledge of structural problems” but that they had “played watch” pour “spend as late as possible and as little as possible”.
Concerning the architect Richard Carta, who had appraised the building less than three weeks before its collapse, an acquittal was also requested by his lawyers who confided that the required sentence (three years including two years in prison) “stunned”.
Dismissal
Me Cyril Gosset was surprised that his client was being prosecuted and not the other expert, Reynald Filipputti, who had benefited from a dismissal of the case “even though he had known the building for four years”.
His other Parisian lawyer, Me Cyrille Charbonneau insisted: the role of the legal expert is not to put an end to the danger of a building but to put an end to the imminence of a danger. Certainly, he did not propose to evacuate all the tenants but in all cases, it is the town hall which decides.
On Wednesday, the defense of Julien Ruas, who was precisely the deputy mayor responsible for these issues at the town hall then headed by Jean-Claude Gaudin, who died in May and whose shadow hung over the debates, must plead. The decision of the criminal court will be reserved.
