GuelphMercury
Versailles insists the embattled Canadian industry, which is now only located in central Quebec, cleaned up its act long ago. He said the fibrous mineral is handled safely a claim industry critics dispute.
I personally believe that there is no possibility, said Guy Versailles, a spokesperson for Montreal asbestos investor Baljit Chadha and Quebecs Jeffrey Mine.
Prosecutors said the men, both key shareholders in the Swiss construction firm Eternit, failed to stop asbestos fibres at factories in the northern Italy from spreading across the region. The defendants had denied wrongdoing.
Ed Ratushny, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, said executives can be charged in Canada with negligence for employee injuries and deaths.
A representative for Canadas controversial asbestos sector said he doesnt believe similar criminal charges could ever be laid against industry players here.
An Italian news agency, reporting from the courthouse, said the defendants were ordered to pay $32.5 million to the town of Casale Monferrato, where one of the factories was located and where asbestos was used in road construction. They were also ordered to pay $26 million to the Piedmont region.
Two hours after announcing the convictions, Judge Giuseppe Casalbore was stillGuelphMercury reading the courts complete verdict, which included awards of monetary damages from civil lawsuits from some 6,300 victims or their relatives who alleged that loved ones either died or were left ill from asbestos.
Hundreds of people, many of them who had lost parents or spouses to asbestos-linked diseases, crowded into the courtroom and two nearby halls for the verdict. When the convictions were announced, some of the spectators wept.
The asbestos sector has made many headlines in Canada, as it did in Italy during the two-year trial of de Cartier and Schmidheiny.
Construction-firm executives Jean-Louise de Cartier of Belgium and Stephan Schmidheiny of Switzerland were each handed 16-year prison sentences for negligence following a trial that officials called historic.
Italian Health Minister Renato Balduzzi hailed the verdict by the Turin court as without exaggeration, truly historic, noting that it came after a long battle for justice.
Ratushny noted that just because lawyers have won civil lawsuits against the Canadian asbestos Asbestos Law Firmindustry doesnt guarantee criminal charges could also be laid.
He said its hard to make a direct link between actions taken by industry executives and asbestos exposure, which often takes a long time to develop into a related illness.
The debate over health concerns has undermined the reputation of Canadas once-mighty asbestos industry, which is now hoping to secure a $58-million bank-loan guarantee from the Quebec government to survive.
Theres a higher burden of proof in a criminal case you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt, he said.
But one legal expert said similar criminal charges could be possible in Canada. He added, however, that it might be difficult for prosecutors to obtain a conviction.
Ratushny cited how several managers and supervisors were charged in the 1992 Westray coal-mine explosion in Nova Scotia,Mesothelioma doctors (115). which killed 26 miners.
I think its as simple as that.
The victims and the lawyers have been so persistent on this for decades milking the industry dry that anything they could do and anything governments could do would have been done, he said Monday following the verdict.
MONTREAL Canadas asbestos industry says it has nothing to fear after two men were criminally convicted by a court in Italy, on Monday, in more than 2,000 asbestos-related deaths in Italy.
Canada has faced mounting opposition from health critics at home and abroad over its production and export of the carcinogenic material.
Versailles said if it were possible, such charges likely would already have been filed against people in a highly scrutinized industry that has lost many civil lawsuits for past unsafe practices of the 1950s, 60s and 70s.