February 8th, 2010. The hearing was dedicated to several oppositions by the defendant's lawyers against the plaintiff. They tried to invalidate the indictment and excepted the participation of many organizations and individuals into the plaintiff. The prosecutor firmly conteracted, asserting the legitimacy of their presence. And he did so convincingly...

Lawyer Astolfo Di Amato (Schmidheiny) lamented the accumulation of the plaintiff's members. An adequate check of each one of the 6000 individuals constituting theplaintiff's dossier would be impossible for the defence [1]. So far, claimed Di Amato, his staff has only managed to evaluate 2500 papers. Do all those people have the right to take part in the trial?

The plaintiff, according to Di Amato, would be a hindrance to the trial, putting psychological pressure on the judge. In addiction, reminded his son Alessio Di Amato, hundreds of victim's relatives agreeded upon the compensation offered by Becon, a firm linked to Schmidheiny (read more about it) and don't have the rights then to enroll at the plaintiff. Had they yet resigned from the list of the victims?

The same remark was expressed by the lawyer Cesare Zaccone, representing the Belgian defendant. He also claimed the non involvement of the baron: his client was involved in the management of the italian Eternit distantly and only for a short period, from January 1971 to December 1972, even if he was formally incumbent until January 1975. That means that all the victims belonging to the following period have to be considered, in his opinion, out of his liability.

The same issue would be valid for all the organizations eventually set up after 1972, eg. the Eternit of Rubiera, close to Modena: in this case, Zaccone asked for the withdrawal of all the victims from Rubiera and opposed to the participation of the Emilia Romagna Regional institution.

Finally, all the defendant's lawyers agreed to the fact that many institutions, unions and associations are not qualified to remain in the plaintiff and asked for their exclusion. Above all, they addressed their request against the INPS (the National Social Security Institute) with its compensation notice of 2 billion euro, and to INAIL (the national insurance for the industrial accidents), requesting 246 billion for 1.648 cases of victims among the Eternit workers. During the preliminary hearings (April - July 2009), the judge already accepted INPS and INAIL.

The last part of the 3rd session was assigned to the cross-examination of the oppositions. Many lawyers from the plaintiff pronounced a 2 minute speech (the sheriff Casalbore is very strict with the discipline): among them Davide Petrini ("the plaintiff is huge because the tragedy is immense") and Raffaele Guariniello. The public prosecutor defended the right of INPS to join the plaintiff and to ask for a compensation. His steady words and his authority remind us that it is just a matter of time. Now is the time for waiting.

(By Asbestos Victims Families Casale, Asbestos in the dock, 13/02/2010)

[1] Di Amato is probably adding to the count all the victim's relatives that joined the plaintiff so far. In fact, if we consider an average of 2,6 people each victim, the sum would be 2,300 victims enrolled in the trial.