Two dead. The first, Tony Moulon, died a year after filing a complaint; the second, Jean-Laurent Paolini, only a few weeks after being interviewed by the gendarmes. They suffered from lung cancer, recognized in this case as occupational diseases. This is the whole subject of the trial of Robert Martin, a septuagenarian and former head of service at the city of Marseille in charge of building maintenance, who is accused today of not having alerted for two years of the presence of asbestos in the walls of La Criée, a theater located in the Old Port where the two men who died worked.
Robert Martin was tried for manslaughter and involuntary injury, endangering the lives of others and for the use of a forgery which, according to the prosecution, served to cover up his wrongs, reports Le Monde. The pensioner, who spent forty-three years at the town hall of Marseille, challenged before the judges his responsibility for the two deaths. He also refutes his responsibility for the asbestos diseases of which two other theater employees are victims. The man was sentenced to three years in prison, including one to be served under electronic surveillance at home, and a fine of 30,000 euros on Wednesday.
In 2006, a diagnosis transmitted to Robert Martin attested to the presence of a plastery asbestos coating, Progypsol, in the walls of the building. The product is carcinogenic. The report made a two-year stay at the town hall of Marseille, where it landed in the drawers of the National Building Service South, directed by Robert Martin. A decree in force since 2001 had however made it compulsory to quickly transmit the diagnosis to the theater, no later than December 29. It will be transmitted on November 27, 2008. Robert Martin affirms that the expertise before was already transmitted by mail in 2006. So far, nothing has made it possible to verify it.
The gendarmes, on the other hand, came across a letter dated December 29, 2006 signed Robert Martin, which would have accompanied the sending of the expertise to the theater. For prosecutor Marion Chabot, it is a fake. The letter would have been written and added a posteriori in the archives of the service. According to the prosecutor quoted in Le Monde, Robert Martin “tried to erase the evidence of his own fault to the detriment of the health of others”. The letter would be, still according to Marion Chabot, “the expression of the pettiness and vileness of a leader whose deliberate faults are the result of glaring incompetence”.
During the trial, Robert Martin meanwhile claimed to have done his best “to ensure that the people of Marseille are in the best conditions of safety and health in the buildings for which [he] was responsible”. For him, the fault comes from the “political”, which “did not take the measure of the extent and the consequences” that the decree concerning asbestos “imposed”. His lawyer argues that the budgets granted to the head of department were too low to allow diagnosis of all the buildings for which he was responsible. With its annual 90,000 euros, it would have taken 16 years “to diagnose the 500 buildings” in its portfolio, explains Robert Martin. On the prosecution side, he is accused of never having raised these budgetary difficulties.
