The charges against Swiss
entrepreneur Stephan Schmidheiny as part of the Eternit asbestos
case were on Tuesday changed from manslaughter to involuntary
manslaughter.
In 2012 he was found guilty of negligence at Eternit's
now-defunct Italian factories in the 1970s and 1980s and
sentenced to 18 years in prison, but Italy's highest Cassation
Court overturned the verdict in November 2014 on the grounds
that the case had timed out.
The Constitutional Court in July green-lit a multiple
manslaughter trial against him for the asbestos deaths of 258
workers at four Eternit cement plants while he owned the
company.
On Tuesday, a Turin judge ruled that about a hundred of the
cases had reached the statute of limitations and ordered that
others be transferred to the Reggio Emilia, Vercelli and Naples
prosecutor's offices.
Only two cases remain in Naples, for which a trial will begin
on June 14.
Schmidheiny's defense lawyer, Astolfo Di Amato, called it a
"huge victory", while one of the lawyers representing the
plaintiffs called it "a failure for the administration of
justice".
The lawyer, Sergio Bonetto, noted that the transfer of the
cases to three other prosecutors' offices would significantly
lengthen the time "before the cause of and responsibility for
these deaths can be ascertained".
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