An Orpea logo, during the group’s general meeting in Paris, July 28, 2022 (AFP / JULIEN DE ROSA)
Pleading for the release of his clients, the lawyer for Orpea and the former director of a nursing home of the group targeted Friday in his pleading the families of the three residents who died drowned during devastating floods in 2015 on the Côte d’Ivoire. ‘Azure.
Denouncing before the criminal court of Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes) the “aberrant sums” claimed in damages, Me Michel Valiergue questioned the attachment to their deceased grandmother displayed by some Thursday at the hearing.
“You had a beautiful house next to the retirement home, you could have taken it with you,” he told one of the families, whose lawyer claimed more than 100,000 euros in damages on Thursday, explaining that he had for his part kept his mother at home, who died “in (his) arms”.
“Orpea does what we don’t want to do, what we are loath to do. Taking care of bedridden elderly people is not very rewarding, it’s tiring, it’s tiring,” insisted the lawyer.
Several civil parties came out with tears in their eyes, explaining that the guilt of having placed their grandmother in place had not left them since the tragedy.
“Orpea is mistreatment until the hearing,” hissed Mr Philippe Soussi, lawyer for several families, in reference to the scandal born from the practices of the former management of the group, revealed by an investigative book by Victor Castanet, “The Gravediggers”.
On the evening of October 3, 2015, a wave of flooding invaded the ground floor of the retirement home in this town of 10,000 inhabitants. Three residents aged 82, 91 and 94 had drowned.
On Thursday, the prosecution requested an 18-month suspended prison sentence against former mayor Guilaine Debras as well as a 12-month suspended sentence against the city’s natural risks manager, Yann Pastierik, and against the former director of the retirement home. , Anaïs Gledel.
A fine of 50,000 euros was requested against the Orpea group.
The lawyers of the four defendants, tried for involuntary manslaughter, all argued that they did not have sufficient information on the level of risk to take the only necessary preventive measure: taking the residents upstairs before the wave.
Thus, the nursing home had already been flooded but Orpea, who bought it in 2011, and Ms. Gledel, in office for a month, thought they were safe since the installation of retention basins upstream.
And even if Météo France had placed the department on orange vigilance, the organization “completely misunderstood the intensity” of the precipitation, insisted Me Valiergue.
Across the coast, floods had wreaked havoc, killing 20 people and causing widespread damage. And many had not seen anything coming: the prefect’s chief of staff was at the same football match as Mr. Pastierik, at the Allianz Arena, and a Johnny Hallyday concert had been held on the banks of the Var.
In these conditions, Ms. Debras appears as a “scapegoat”, denounced her lawyer, Me Franck Ginez.
The judgment was reserved until March 25.