In 2015, a wave of flooding devastated several neighborhoods and invaded the ground floor of the Biot retirement home.
(AFP / LOIC VENANCE)
“Abuse until the hearing”. The Orpea lawyer attacked on Friday January 19 the families of the three residents who died drowned in a nursing home during devastating floods in 2015 on the Côte d’Azur. 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, who died “in (his) arms” at home. .
“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”.
Lawyers plead for acquittal
On the evening of October 3, 2015, catastrophic storms transformed several rivers on the Côte d’Azur into torrents of water and mud, causing the death of 20 people and considerable damage. In Biot, a hilly town of nearly 10,000 inhabitants north of Antibes, a wave of flooding devastated several neighborhoods and invaded the ground floor of the village retirement home.
Three residents, aged 82, 91 and 94, drowned there.
On Thursday, the prosecution had requested an 18-month suspended prison sentence against the former mayor of the town Guilaine Debras as well as a 12-month suspended sentence against the city’s natural risks manager, Yann Pastierik and the former director of the house of retirement, Anaïs Gledel.
A fine of 50,000 euros
had been requested against the Orpea group. The lawyers of the four defendants, tried for involuntary homicide, pleaded for acquittal, considering that they did not have sufficient information on the level of risk to take the necessary preventive measures.
The hearing continued Friday at midday with the end of the pleadings.