The railway infrastructure manager, SNCF Réseau, was fined 225,000 euros for the involuntary manslaughter of a railway worker who was hit by a train during an intervention in Nancy in 2016, the Agence France-Presse (AFP), with the lawyer of the civil party, Thursday 1er FEBRUARY.
This sentence, handed down by the Nancy Criminal Court on Wednesday, is in accordance with the requests made by the public prosecutor during the hearing on November 6, which requested the maximum fine of 225,000 euros.
“This is the culmination of more than six years of procedure”, underlined to AFP the lawyer for the civil party, Laurent Paté. During the hearing, the SNCF counsel, Quentin Dreyfus, pleaded for acquittal.
José Garcia, on-call maintenance agent on the evening of December 6, 2016, was working around 11 p.m., in the dark, at 0 degrees and with thick fog, when he crossed the track and was hit by a train . He died instantly.
“Negligence” of the SNCF, points out the civil party’s lawyer
The 49-year-old man was described by his colleagues and superiors as ” very professional “ and attentive to safety. Should José Garcia have been accompanied by an announcer during his speech? The SNCF specifies, in its regulations, that the presence of an announcer is obligatory when the operation takes place in a dangerous zone, on the tracks, and is not the rest of the time.
But “at 11 p.m., you have to have that in mind”was surprised Me Paté, who in his pleading pointed out a ” neglect “ of the SNCF and “failures” in terms of security. At the hearing, the question of whether SNCF employees were aware of safety rules was raised, while a report from Direccte, the labor inspectorate, had noted that the agents did not had not done any specific training on this point for several years.
At the hearing, José Garcia’s widow, Sandra Hum, deplored that the SNCF had not changed its safety procedures since the accident: “How many José Garcias are there going to be?” », she asked. Contacted by AFP, Me Dreyfus has not responded yet.