The investigation, begun in 1996, has just ended in a dismissal: the courts have ordered the abandonment of the proceedings in the case of poisoning by asbestos on the Parisian campus of Jussieu, emblematic of the fight against victims seeking accountability.
In an order of February 24, consulted Monday by AFP, three magistrates of the public health center of Paris considered that there were not sufficient charges to refer the university or its former officials to trial for injuries, involuntary homicides or endangering the life of others.
It is “not possible to link the damage to any faults that could be attributed – with certainty – to people with responsibility for exposure to asbestos”, they conclude.
Of all the investigations into this health scandal, that of Jussieu is one of the most emblematic: it was from this Parisian faculty that, in the 1970s, the first major mobilization denouncing poisoning by the asbestos used for the construction of buildings.
But after more than two decades of investigations, the twenty or so asbestos cases investigated in Paris have been ending for three years without being referred to court.
Before Jussieu, the magistrates pronounced in 2021 dismissals in the case of the Chantiers navales du Nord et de la Méditerranée (Normed) and in 2019 in that of the factories of Condé-sur-Noireau and for Eternit, the first French producer of asbestos cement until this fiber was banned in 1997.
As in these cases, the magistrates relied for Jussieu on a judicial expertise of 2017, which considers it impossible to deduce with precision the moment of the exposure of the employees to this carcinogenic fiber and that of their contamination, and therefore to establish the criminal responsibility of such and such a leader.
The dismissal order thus underlines the scientific impossibility, given the generally very long latency times of asbestos-related diseases (forty years on average for mesothelioma in particular), of determining on an individual scale at what time or even at what period the contamination giving rise to intoxication occurred”.
– “Flawed argument” –
“The argument for reaching this conclusion is much more sophisticated than in the other cases. It is nonetheless scientifically and legally erroneous”, regretted the Jussieu anti-asbestos committee and the National Association of Victims of Asbestos. asbestos (AVA).
Both plan to appeal the judges’ order.
The investigation was opened in 1996 after the filing of the first complaints, when the first occupational diseases appeared among the staff of the faculty.
The plaintiffs pointed out that asbestos was present in the flocking of a large part of the buildings on the Jussieu campus, which then included the universities of Paris VI and Paris VII as well as the Paris Institute of Globe Physics (IPGP ), built between 1964 and 1972.
The first protective works were carried out at the end of the 1970s and only concerned the ground floor, they added, denouncing a “law of silence”.
But the judges considered that “it appears impossible to identify a natural person before 1994 and a natural and legal person after March 1994 likely to be at the origin, by the violation of a legal or regulatory obligation at a given moment, of the intoxication of one of the plaintiffs”
In 2018, the Court of Cassation had ratified the abandonment of the proceedings against national decision-makers in this case.
She also exonerated eight people in 2015, including former minister Martine Aubry, a time prosecuted for her role between 1984 and 1987 at the Ministry of Labor as director of labor relations.
Faced with setbacks in the criminal justice system, asbestos victims filed a direct summons in November with the Paris court, in order to lead to the trial of 14 people, in particular for “involuntary homicides and injuries” and “complicity in aggravated deception “.
In 2012, health authorities estimated that asbestos could cause 3,000 deaths each year by 2025 from cancers of the pleura or bronchopulmonary cancers.