Since the start of the 1990s, Soulez Larivière & Associés has become a leader in the handling of crisis and disasters, especially industrial, aviation and shipping disasters.
This expertise has been acquired by representing clients in a large number of cases. Many of these cases were widely covered in the media. They include most of the aviation disasters in France over the past twenty-five years, the collapse of a stand at the Furiani stadium in 1992, the sinking of the Erika tanker at the end of 1999 (finally decided on appeal in 2010) and the 2001 AZF chemical factory explosion in Toulouse (all of the defendants were acquitted in 2009 but the case will be heard on appeal in autumn 2011).
Society today refuses to accept the fact that disasters are unforeseeable, and above all, unavoidable. Although this practice area is not yet considered important enough to be the core practice area of a firm, this should change. This refusal to accept industrial, shipping or aviation disasters is at the very heart of western society’s expectations, and therefore of the most basic developments in modern thinking.
Many other cases handled by the firm also fall within this practice area of crisis management and disasters. For example, there was the fire at the thermal baths in Barbotan and the sinking of the Snekkar Arctic, a trawler, which resulted in an acquittal in 2006. In the field of aviation, there was the Airbus A320 crash at Mont Sainte-Odile, which was decided on appeal in autumn 2007 and again resulted in an acquittal on all counts, as well as the Concorde crash in July 2000, where the firm acted for a member of France’s civil aviation authority and obtained his acquittal on 6 December 2010.
Articles relating to this practice area (only available in French):
- « Comprendre ou juger ? »
- Des dangers de la pénalisation des accidents
- « Affaire "Erika" : Total victime d’un malentendu »
- Vers une responsabilité illimitée de l’ingénieur ?
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