The family of a French teenager who was tragically crushed to death on the first night of a Malta holiday have been awarded over €1.1 million in damages after the court found the owners of a construction company liable for his death.
The case dates back to 2011 when 19-year-old Quentin Antoine Marie Michel came to Malta on one final holiday with a group of 13 other friends. The school-mates had intended to celebrate together before all of them flew their separate ways to begin their university studies, renting a holiday villa in Swieqi together.
But tragedy struck on the first night of their stay when a wall close to the property’s swimming pool collapsed while Michel had been ‘hanging’ by his hands on top of it. The wall began to tilt and fell right on top of him, injuring him fatally.
From testimony, it emerged that the friends had been enjoying themselves by the pool after a group dinner, with Michel changing into his bathing suit, and rejoining the group sometime later.
It was said that Michel had both his hands on top of the wall and was posing for a picture, they said, in which he had been pretending to scale the wall.
Seconds before the incident one of the group members had snapped some pictures of Michel even as the wall began to tilt. That picture, which showed the wall folding on top of the teen, was exhibited in the case.
Wall built for 'aesthetic reasons'
A magisterial inquiry into the death had found that the wall in question had primarily been built for aesthetic reasons and had not been properly secured.
There was no form of binding holding the bricks together nor was anything securing them to the exposed rock at their anterior. This led court experts to conclude that there had been nothing in the way of collation to prevent the wall from collapsing.
On this basis, the court found James Mifsud and Gordon Farrugia of Buz-Dov Developments - the builders of the wall in question, liable for Michel’s death.
In their submissions, the defendants tried to argue that Michel had contributed to the incident to some degree since he had been hanging off it.
But the court rubbished their arguments.
“The most difficult element towards the success of the defence of contributory negligence is whether the deceased, when he accepted to pose for this photo, had any idea that he was putting himself in the danger that in fact occurred, based on reasonable probability, and chose to do so regardless,” Judge Miriam Hayman said.
“And so was this unfortunate young man, who after being in our country for a mere two or three hours, who chose to pose for this picture supposed to know, if he used logic dictated by normal reasoning and not technical or expert reasoning, the reasoning of the man in the street and that of the tender age of 19, supposed to know that it would have collapsed on top of him the minute it encountered the least bit of pressure?”
The owners of the villa were absolved of responsibility.
When considering damages, Judge Hayman took into account the fact that Michel had intended to venture into the tourism industry after completing business school, which would have netted him earning far higher than the minimum wage in Malta.
Supported by testimony and statistical data, she considered the teen’s potential earnings at €50,400, per annum, multiplied by 33 years.
Considering multiple factors, including cost of living, personal expenses, pensionable age in France and applying a 2% reduction due to the immediate nature of a lump-sum payment, the final compensation for the death amounted to €1,140,955.
Lawyer Michael Zammit Maempel appeared for Quentin Michel’s heirs