from Fulvio Fiano and Giulio De Santis
The judge acquitted them with the formula “because the fact does not exist”. The accident took place in April 2019, the man was paralyzed
The monocratic court of Rome has acquitted the four people end up on trial for the injury of a competitor of the broadcast «Ciao Darwin», on 17 April 2019.
The judge acquitted them with the formula “because the fact does not exist” also accepting an objection presented by the defenders because the injured party had remitted his lawsuit after having found an economic agreement for his compensation.
The prosecutors contested the accusation against the four serious personal injury.
Among others, two representatives of the Rti company, producer of the program that was broadcast on Channel 5. The competitor Gabriele Marchetti, 57 years old now, was engaged in the test of Genodromea sort of path jumping between large moving rollers and had fallen between them in a sprawling way.
The prosecutor Alessia Miele had obtained the trial Sandro Costa And Massimo Portaboth at the top of Rti (Italian television networks, a company merged into Mediaset, as well as producer of the transmission broadcast on Canale5), accused of very serious injuries and violation of the laws concerning safety in the workplace, and then Massimiliano Martinellicompany manager Maximumwho took care of the equipment, e Giuliano Giovannotti of SDL 2005, a company which at the time had the task of selecting the participants in the game.
The complaints revolved around the lack of training of the competitor to try their hand at the test and under the conditions of objective danger of the game system: the reels were suspended over a meter in height on a tub with a rigid bottom with nothing to mitigate the impact at the moment of falling. Marchetti reported the crushing of two vertebrae, with a spinal cord injury that compressed his chest, preventing him from breathing. The emergency operation was perfectly successful but could not prevent the man from being completely immobile from the moment of the fall to today, from the neck down.
In an interview from last JuneMarchetti had said: «Before that day I was a man who did a thousand things. Now it’s all over for me». And again: «Paolo Bonolis has never asked me to find out how I am. People close to him never contacted me either. At the beginning, only someone from the production contacted my family by phone and email to find out my physical condition. They made themselves available for any of our needs. But then there were no other contacts ». The incident dates back to April 2019.
«From the outset, the intention was to raise awareness so that the safety legislation is applied to prevent accidents accidents in the workplace, but also in the play areas – comments the lawyer Giovanni Ciano, who assists the Marchetti family together with his colleague Federica Magnati -. The Marchetti family imagined that this would be the outcome of the proceeding».
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