Why it matters. Substandard housing: Judgment on Rue d'Aubagne collapses expected this Monday

Who, among the deputy mayor, the expert, the trustee, or the co-owners, can be held responsible for the fatal collapses on Rue d'Aubagne in Marseille? The answer will be given this Monday with the highly anticipated judgment in this disgraceful housing tragedy. On the morning of November 5, 2018, the buildings located at 63 and 65 Rue d'Aubagne in Marseille collapsed , killing eight people .

This trial, which took place over a month and a half last autumn , was much more than just a legal affair and the unusual trial room was transformed into a sort of agora where all the anger and sadness of a city that had been traumatised by seeing two buildings fall in the heart of the city centre like houses of cards was expressed.

As the hearings progressed, the debates established that the collapses of numbers 63 (empty) and 65 were inevitable given the state of the building. However, no provision for shelter for the tenants of number 65 had been made, and the work undertaken had proven ineffective, even counterproductive.

Can anyone in particular be held responsible? The legal debate surrounding this issue is extremely complex, and the judgment, which is due to be delivered at 10 a.m., is expected to take a long time to assess the situation of each of the 16 defendants.

The investigation had referred four people to court: Julien Ruas, the deputy mayor at the time, LR Jean-Claude Gaudin, and architect Richard Carta, who had appraised the building less than three weeks before its collapse. They also included two legal entities: the property manager of number 65, the Liautard firm, and the social landlord who owned number 63, which was left in a state of ruin by Marseille Habitat.

These proceedings were deemed incomplete by some of the civil parties who decided to summon a dozen additional people, including some co-owners and representatives of the two legal entities.

For ^Mr. Brice Grazzini, who is representing some thirty of the approximately ninety civil parties, it is important that the four main defendants be convicted of involuntary manslaughter through a manifestly deliberate violation of a safety obligation. And that the co-owners be convicted for subjecting vulnerable people to undignified housing conditions.

In the Rue d'Aubagne case, prosecutor Michel Sastre considered that almost all of the 16 defendants were guilty, calling for heavy sentences , the longest for a co-owner, Xavier Cachard: five years in prison, three of which were firm.

In Marseille, where the scourge of substandard housing is thriving, Monday's verdict is highly anticipated. Since the tragedy, the courts in France's second- ^largest city have no hesitation in sending slum landlords to prison, as they did in March when they sentenced the owner of some thirty unsanitary studios in a former university residence.