The Supreme Court has raised compensation to 14 relatives of the victims who died in the Germanwings incident, which killed 150 people when the pilot crashed the plane into the mountains of the French Alps in March 2015.
The Supreme Court understands that the amount established by the Provincial Court of Barcelona is disproportionately low taking into account the extreme seriousness of the facts. That court used the scales of compensation for motor vehicle accidents as a reference and applied an increase of 25% provided by law in exceptional cases and extraordinarily added an increase of 20% in the event that the relative lived with the deceased and 10%. % otherwise. In this way, the amounts varied between 20,625 and 105,000 euros depending on the family member.
In the ruling that came out yesterday, the Supreme Court considers these amounts insufficient and decides that all family members –regardless of whether or not they lived with the victims– must see the extraordinary figure increased by 50%, which represents an increase of 75%. starting from the base references of traffic accidents.
“Such a meager percentage of increase in compensation (...) hardly differs from what would be granted in the event of a 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, even more so when the accident was not accidental, but was due to the deliberate action of one of the crew members”, maintains the Supreme Court, which has partially upheld the appeal filed by the Marimón Abogados law firm on behalf of 14 relatives of seven of the victims.
Esther Domínguez, partner of the firm, shows her agreement with the increase in compensation since "now the principle of total indemnity for the injured party is respected." However, Ella Domínguez proposed to stop using the traffic scale and instead apply criteria similar to deaths from terrorism or catastrophes in mass events. "We are not facing an accident, but rather multiple murders in an extremely serious accident with high media exposure," says the lawyer.
As for the rest of the compensation, the relatives of the victims reached a conciliation agreement with Allianz, the airline's insurer. As a result of the incident, the German company (owned by Lufthansa) changed the name of the brand and Germanwings began to operate as Eurowings.
