Manslaughter – Fall From Height – Scaffolding

A young professional has one goal in mind, when he begins to reach the benefits of hard work: own a home. It is the symbol of professional success, of the ability to make a career beyond success linked to work challenges.

It often starts with the help of the family that makes available the necessary funds to start their own business, and then, after an established professional, a studio can be opened in which the young professional  can receive customers, start to make a name, make the recommendation from customer to customer circulating.

But the road is always uphill and the expenses that a professional has to face are many, that is why being able to get to the coveted purchase is an even more important goal in life the sooner it arrives.

For a young architect, who lives in Rome, luck knocked on the door when his parents decided to leave the house where they had lived over the years to move to a more comfortable accommodation. The advancing age brings with it fewer needs and the large spaces that used to house a cheerful and large family, are now difficult to manage for a couple who are going to seniority. And so, a new phase of life begins for everyone.

Of course, the property needs maintenance work and needs to be adapted to the most modern tastes of a young person. But this is daily bread for S.C. in whose veins the call of style flows, and being able to dedicate himself for once and not another stranger, fills him with joy.

To carry out the renovations, he relies on a company he already knows because contacted for the accommodation of the properties of some clients. The construction company is not large, it has some specialized masons, but they are good, quick and above all cheap.

The professional was well aware of the security measures to be taken

During the execution of the works the company works in perfect autonomy and does not need the presence of the landlord. He then walks away trusting on all the safety provisions being observed and implemented by the workers on the site.

Unfortunately, however, the unexpected happens. One of the workers employed by the construction company falls to the ground while on top of one of the scaffolding mounted inside the building and, due to the very serious injuries sustained in the impact with the floor, dies a short time later.

The homeowner, who is by law the contractor of the works, is also responsible for ensuring that all safety measures are observed, including ropes and restrains to be ensured when carrying out work to be carried out remotely from the ground.

As a result, the architect is charged with the crime of manslaughter and his life turned upside down in an instant.

All the happiness he was experiencing for finally reaching the goal of his life seems to vanish into nothingness. Not only that, but his profession is also at risk: what credibility upon an architect who is accused of negligence for not being able to supervise the safety of the work carried out in his own house?

Fate seems to have had a heavy hand

The situation is bound to upset his family too, because he has always been an example of human and professional seriousness. Defending his favourite son from such a terrible accusation is devastating.

Moreover, they are afflicted by imagining what the consequences of his responsibility might be. If the crime were to be ascertained, he would no longer be able to practice the profession of architect, and then the affair could also have serious economic implications.

Prove your innocence at all costs

However, the young architect has in himself the desire to react to the accusations and to be able to continue to live and work with his head held high. He knows that he did everything possible to ensure that the work was carried out in complete safety, he also knows that he left the house only after making sure that the workers working on the scaffolding were actually hooked up to the safety devices.

Allegations of negligence are disputed

To defend the architecture professional there is a lawyer specialized in the responsibilities deriving from accidents at work. Its task is to demonstrate that there is no reason for the client to challenge allegations of negligence, recklessness and/or incompetence, and violation of the rules for the prevention of accidents at work.

Prosecutor seeks manslaughter charge

This is not an easy challenge, because the public prosecutor is not prepared to back down from his convictions. For the Public Prosecutor the young Calabrian architect is guilty of having failed to comply with the rules that prevent accidents and will have to answer for the death of the worker.

For this reason, he calls for him to be sentenced to two years in prison.

Acquitted for not having committed the fact

The lawyer decides to continue the process by asking for his client the forms of abbreviated judgment. The hearing will not be carried out and his guilt will be decided in the light of the evidence already acquired during the investigation and present in the public prosecutor's file and in that of the defense.

The lawyer firmly believes that the status of the acts is sufficient to exclude guilt and does not intend to subject his client to the tour de force of hearings, witnesses and physiological duration of the criminal trial.

The Judge of the Preliminary Hearing, GUP, by virtue of the Court of Rome finally fully acquitted the young architect S.C. He ruled that he had been acquitted of manslaughter and had not committed the crime.

He acknowledged that he had done everything in his power to comply with the rules for the prevention of accidents at work and took all appropriate measures to ensure the health and safety of the workers who were carrying out the construction work on his building and which he himself commissioned.

It remains to be seen what was the real cause of the worker's fall to the ground. Once the presence of the safety devices was demonstrated thanks to the timely inspection of the judicial police, however, it was not possible to understand why the worker ended up on the ground.

Perhaps an illness caused him to lose control, perhaps he performed an accidental and reckless maneuver or perhaps another mason present in the same scaffolding may have caused him to inadvertently lose his balance forcing him to fall to the ground.

The fact is that all these situations had nothing to do with the rules that the young architect and contractor of the works had to observe in order to avoid any liability whatsoever, and clearly the factors that led to the death of the bricklayer must be ascribed, as the GUP states, to elements incompatible with the work to be carried out   and therefore the contractor had no direct or indirect responsibility for the accident.