The public ministry’s long hard fight to see blame apportioned for a construction tragedy in Setúbal nine years ago (click here) has ended with Évora appeal court ruling no-one was responsible. Prosecutors contended that the defendants (the site’s former director of security, the technical director of works and the company in charge of the project) “broke the law deliberately and consciously when it came to technical and legal rules of construction pertaining to excavation”. Ten days before the accident the defendants had informed the local authority of the work they would be doing, but never explained they would be digging alongside the wall that went on to collapse. Judges however have now reiterated an earlier court decision, ruling none of the defendants could have known what was going to happen.
