More than 1,000 people including survivors and the
families of victims of Europe’s worst peacetime shipping disaster took
their claims for compensation to a French court on Friday, 25 years
after the sinking of MV Estonia in the Baltic Sea.
The
ferry went down on the morning of September 28, 1994, while travelling
between Tallinn and Stockholm, killing 852 of the 989 people on board.
Following
the incident, an international commission established to investigate
the accident concluded in a 1997 report that the problem had been a
defect in the bow-door locking system that opened onto the ferry’s car
deck.
The
French court will assess whether shipbuilder Jos L. Meyer-Werft and the
French certification agency, Bureau Veritas, which had inspected the
ferry twice in 1994, should pay damages to the 1,116 plaintiffs.
Maxime
Cordier, a lawyer acting for them, said the court would rule “who is
responsible for the negligence in the conception and the operation of
the vessel”.
It has taken more than twenty years of efforts in the
French legal system to have the case heard and the claimants are asking
for more than 40 million euro ($45 million) for psychological damages,
Cordier said.
After the disaster, the Swedish-Estonian shipping
company that owned the MV Estonia agreed to pay 130 million euros ($147
million) for loss and damages to survivors and next of kin through an
indemnity fund.
The hearings, which are scheduled for Friday and
Monday, will take place in front of a French high court on the outskirts
of Paris, near the headquarters of Bureau Veritas. A verdict is
expected in July.
The claimants will seek to show that the design
of the ferry was intrinsically dangerous because of the opening
mechanism at the front of the vessel, designed to allow vehicles to
drive off quickly.
The MV Estonia has never been raised from the seabed, 85 metres (280 feet) down, and the wreck remains off limits to divers.
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