HAVET & VANHUFFEL – Association d’avocats
Europe – In a judgment of 27 March 2025 (No. 82/2025 – Laterza and D‘Errico v. Italy), the European Court of Human Rights condemns Italy for the lack of efforts by the courts to establish the existence or not of a pathology between the death of a man and his exposure to dangerous products in the context of his professional activity (violation of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights – right to life).
The applicants are two Italian nationals born in 1976 and 1956 respectively. They are the son and wife of G.L., who had been employed by Ilva, a company specialising in the production and processing of steel, between 1980 and 2004.
Mr G.L., who had been exposed to dangerous products in the course of his professional activity between 1980 and 2004, died in July 2010 as a result of a lung tumour.
His heirs filed a complaint against X, supported by an expert opinion, for manslaughter. The expert report concluded that the existence of a causal link between the activity of the Ilva factory could be established.
In 2022, the competent judge, while considering that the occupational origin of the pathology could not be excluded, rejected the applicants‘ request and closed the case without further action.
The applicants criticize the national authorities for having closed the case without taking into account the expert report and filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights on 7 June 2022.
The Court considers that the conclusion that no further action should be taken is not based on any expert report or scientific study in the field in question, or on any scientific explanation or circumstance specific to the case which would have prevented the causal link of the exposure with the pathology from being determined, and that, furthermore, the request for the collection of new evidence in order to clarify this point in question was rejected, while the domestic case law is not established to this effect.
The Court concludes that, in such a context, in the light of the domestic case-law on the matter, the investigation was not effective and that there was a violation of Article 2 of the Convention in its procedural aspect.
The judgment is available via the link : https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/fre#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-242443%22]}.