Last week, British justice recognized for the first time the role of pollution in the death of a nine-year-old girl after a violent asthma attack in 2013 while living along a busy boulevard of London.
"
My conclusion is that air pollution was a material contribution to Ella's death,
" Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, London Borough of Southwark Deputy Judicial Officer Philip Barlow said after two weeks of
death.
'hearings.
Marine Calmet, lawyer and president of the Wild Legal program, talks to
Le Figaro
about the possibility of such a decision occurring in France.
Could French justice recognize the role of pollution in a death as was the case last week in Great Britain?
Personally, I am starting from the principle that it would be possible and I am going to do a reflection similar to the case law that there has been in matters of green algae pollution in Brittany.
[...] [In 2009], a walker and his mount fell into a mudflat full of green algae and the horse had died.
Fortunately, his master had fallen out of favor but was able to be rescued in time.
In this case, the horseman brought a lawsuit against the State to see the responsibility of France recognized and indeed, it was the case.
In July 2014, the Nantes administrative court of appeal recognized the role of the State and condemned it for the death of the horse by asphyxiation.
This is an important case law since the courts have recognized the failure of the State for not having known how to apply the European directive, in particular in matters of water protection, and not having exercised its administrative police powers in matters of control of classified installations for the protection of water [...].
In a somewhat similar way, one can consider that if this rider succeeded in obtaining compensation for the loss of his horse, one could quite imagine that a parent could also obtain compensation for the loss [of a limb]. of his family since in both situations we have a State which is failing in terms of compliance with European standards and which does not put in place adequate measures to overcome atmospheric pollution and water pollution.
However, it is the State that is recognized as responsible in the case you cite and not the pollution as such as was the case in Great Britain ...
Yes quite.
In the case as I understood it in the United Kingdom, the mother did not seek recognition of state responsibility.
She asked to have her daughter's death certificate corrected so that air pollution could be identified as the cause of death.
But in both cases, it was necessary to demonstrate the direct link between the death of the horse or the death of the little girl and the presence of green algae or air pollution.
What in French law is preventing this type of decision from being rendered?
It should just be tried and I'm not sure anyone has tried it yet.
Given that the State has been condemned on several occasions for its failure to combat air pollution, what would be interesting in French law is to see whether there would be recognition of the causal link between illness and even death; and air pollution, and therefore state deficiency.
Could the
recognition of an ecocide crime
help to recognize air pollution in the death of a person, considering that he is part of the ecosystem?
I prefer that we use the term that originally existed [in a report published in October 2019], that is to say the "
generic offense of damage to the environment
".
The proposal made by the government, to which I am not opposed, tends to sanction pollution in terms of damage to the air for all matters relating to discharges greater than the standards in force.
So indeed, that would potentially have the effect of being able to go to criminal courts to find the responsibility of actors who have caused air pollution higher than authorized standards.
[...]
Except that the problem right now is that there is a shared responsibility for air pollution.
There is both the responsibility of the State to put in place measures which are imposed on individuals to restrict air pollution, and there is pollution which is linked to private individuals (motorists or large industries for example).
Today, the majority of polluting emissions are made legally [because] they are allowed to pollute below certain thresholds.
Except that when put end to end, all of this pollution sometimes leads to the authorized thresholds being exceeded.
It is up to the State to guarantee that precisely, put end to end, all this pollution does not constitute an infringement of European standards for the protection of the atmosphere.
It is therefore the responsibility of the State which is at stake. However, the proposal made by the government to sanction attacks on the atmosphere, only applies, as is criminal law, to private persons. , since we cannot prosecute the state in criminal proceedings.
In the idea that French law recognizes the role of pollution in a death or illness, what would this change in practice?
Let's say that from a legal point of view, there would be financial penalties which could be high, since in France we are talking about 48,000 deaths per year linked to air pollution.
If we assess the moral prejudice of all these individuals or their families who could seek justice from the French state for non-compliance with these environmental and health standards, the penalties would start to be quite high.
Therefore, the state might be more inclined to take action against pollution?
Effectively.
Already because the signal would be extremely bad.
When we turn against the state and if there is a snowball effect, that is to say a first victory, then a second, then 10, then 100, that could largely contribute to what the State puts the means in compliance with European directives.