The Supreme Court has decided to increase the compensation that the Catalan courts established for 14 relatives of 6 who died in the accident of a Germanwings plane in the French Alps in 2015. The victims had appealed the ruling of the Court of Barcelona that reduced the initial compensation that the airline and its insurer Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty had to pay: they will be paid what the scale of traffic accidents establishes but with a percentage of 50% added and not 25% as stated by the Catalan court. “The incident was not accidental, but was due to the deliberate action of one of the crew members,” say the judges.
The Treasury will collect 800,000 euros from Germanwings orphans
Further
Germanwings flight 9525 crashed in the French Alps on March 24, 2015. A total of 150 people including passengers and crew members who left Barcelona and traveled to Düsseldorf (Germany) died in an incident that, according to the investigation, had a human origin: the aircraft’s co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, locked himself in the cockpit and caused the plane to plummet until it crashed in the mountains. Half a hundred victims were of Spanish nationality. There were no survivors.
The airline and the Allianz insurer reached agreements with most of the families, but several of them decided to go to court to claim compensation for the deaths of their relatives. At first, a commercial court in Barcelona agreed with 14 relatives of half a dozen victims and recognized compensation above what is established by the usual scales. That sentence decided not to apply the scale of traffic accidents “given that the accident occurred intentionally.”
It was in second instance the Provincial Court of Barcelona that reduced these compensations based on these scales as a guiding criterion and with a , in addition to considering that the 50,000 euros that the company gave to the family members at first form part of the final amount. They criticized that first judgment for not determining “what part of the compensation should address non-material damage, the special media exposure of the victims or the emotional impact and using the Spanair accident in Madrid in 2008 as an example, they finally used the scale as a reference and with an increase of between 10% and 25% depending on the case.
The norm, said that second sentence, “is not binding at all, but it can help us to make a first approximation” and they signed a total of 2,174,000 euros in compensation for the 14 relatives who prosecuted their case. The victims, defended by the Marimon Abogados office, took the case to the Supreme Court.
“The duel is not compensated”
Now the Supreme Court says that these percentages applied in the first instances of the process are not enough to alleviate the damages of the accident in which 150 people died. “This compensation hardly differs from what would be granted in the event of a motor vehicle traffic accident. Therefore, the pathological mourning typical of the loss of a loved one in an accident of these characteristics, of a catastrophic nature and connoted of extremely painful circumstances, is not compensated.
Using this scale, says the Supreme Court, is not discrimination “in itself” for the victims of Germanwings, but the percentages applied to increase compensation are insufficient at the discretion of the judges. “The meager percentage increase in compensation compared to the amount that would result from the application of the scale implies a disproportion contrary to the principle of indemnity for the injured party,” he explains.
They remember that in this case it was not a plane accident: “The accident was not accidental, but was due to the deliberate action of one of the crew members,” he adds.
