The aeronautical group Safran was found guilty of manslaughter and involuntary injury and sentenced to a fine of 225,000 euros on Monday in Bordeaux, after an accident which claimed the life of an employee in 2013 in Saint-Médard-en-Jalles (Gironde). ).
On the morning of December 5, 2013, three workers were seriously injured in a fire on a Seveso II high-threshold classified site in Herakles, now Safran Ceramics, which manufactures propellant, a propulsion product for missiles and rockets, 15 km east of west of Bordeaux. They had been transported to the Bordeaux University Hospital where one of them, aged 25, had died at midday.
“Satisfaction for the family”
The accident occurred during “a propellant reserve stripping operation which had been carried out with an old system, reintroduced after the breakage of a newer and safer machine and without this having been brought to the knowledge of the labor inspectorate and the CHSCT,” said Lucie Teynié, lawyer for the family of the deceased employee.
“We argued the violation of a regulation specific to the pyrotechnic risk and the general obligation of safety. It is on this basis that Safran was condemned, ”explained Nadia Bouchama, lawyer for the Sud union, civil party. For Lucie Teynié, “it is a very important satisfaction for the family in a case that the prosecution has never supported. It was a bit like the iron pot against the earthen pot”.
File relaunched in 2019
At the hearing on April 3, the prosecution had indeed requested the release of the company, consistent with its position since the start of the case and that of the investigating magistrate, who had pronounced a dismissal. The file had been relaunched by the investigating chamber of the Bordeaux Court of Appeal, first in 2019, with the indictment of Safran, then in 2022, with the referral of the group to court.
Contacted by AFP, Safran declined to comment on this decision. The group “awaits the communication of the judgment to study with (its) lawyers the follow-up”, said a spokesperson.