February 15th, 2010. The judge Casalbore states that the plaintiff members amount to 6392 [1]. It seems that part of the victims (or victim's relatives) have signed up to the plaintiff twice, creating a technical problem. The judge fixed the deadline for the checking of the list of any involved entity in the trial by March 1st, the date of 5th session. That means that next Monday's session (February 22th , 2010) will be skipped. He will then decide who's in and who's out of the trial.

The cross-examination of the oppositions raised by the defendant's lawyers takes the stage of the 4th session of the public hearing. Many lawyers speak in name of the associations and individual victims of the plaintiff: Medicina Democratica, WWF, Alca (chemical union), CGIL (union), CISL (Union), UIL (union), AMNIL (the industrial accident victims association).

The barrister Bonetto summarizes the point of view of the individual victims and their relatives, claiming to the legitimacy of the victims to register at the plaintiff, as well as of the ones claiming a “moral” or “existential damage” due to the environmental exposition in the cities of Casale Monferrato and Cavagnolo. Other lawyers oppose their argumentation to the exclusion request related to the people who accepted a compensation in 1993 during the bankruptcy of the Italian Eternit, at the time of the first trial in Casale Monferrato.

At 11 a.m. the hearing ends, the next session will be held on March 1st (February 22th , 2010 will be skipped, allowing the time to check the list of the 6392 entities involved for the very last time).

(By Asbestos Victims Families Casale, Asbestos in the dock, 15/02/2010)

[1] The sum of the plaintiff's members include all the victims (deceased and sick persons), the victim's relatives, the institutions and the associations.