The summing up in the trial of two Thomas Cook reps and nine Greeks accused of negligence over the deaths of two children while on holiday on Corfu started today.
Prosecutor, district attorney Maria Tataki, told the court the tour operator should have carried out a more thorough check of the Louis Corcyra Beach Hotel and could not place all the blame on hotel management and maintenance.
Thomas Cook has insisted its reps, Nicola Gibson, 26, and Richard Carson, 28, were not to blame for the deaths due to carbon monoxide poisoning of brother and sister Robert and Christianne Shepherd in October 2006 as it had not been made aware that the hotel had rooms with a gas supply.
Also on trial are nine Greek nationals who were either working at the hotel or were responsible for maintenance of the property at the time of the deaths. One of those was manager George Chrysikopoulos.
Ms Tataki told Corfu Town courthouse on Monday that the two tour operator reps should have realised that the room – a bungalow situated away from the main hotel – in which the children were staying with their father and stepmother had its own gas supply.
Thomas Cook has always insisted that it had written assurances from the hotel that gas was not in use in the property. Specific regulations on internal gas boilers have been in place for all UK operators ever since a series of incidents in the late 1980s.
The bungalow in question was found to have had a badly maintained gas boiler in an outhouse attached to the building and it had leaked carbon monoxide into the room through a hole that had been made in the wall.
Ms Tataki told the court: “I firmly believe that a tour operator like Thomas Cook should have conducted a more thorough check. It doesn’t suffice to say that you trust the owners of the hotel, that you trust the managers of the hotel. No. It’s not enough.”
Public prosecutor Theodore Alissandratos added Carson, whose job it was to fill out health and safety questionnaires for the property, should have asked what was in the outhouse.
He said: “He didn’t perform a proper inspection of the area. The people who trust Thomas Cook with their vacation have the right to believe that they are safe. How can they be safe with an inspection like that? They can’t be safe.”
Under usual protocols Thomas Cook would have ordered its own inspection had it been alerted to the fact that there was gas being used at the hotel.
However, defence lawyers for the hotel staff have argued they could not be expected to act any differently as they had no technical knowledge about gas boilers.
They blamed the maintenance engineers, saying they were the ones with the expertise to know something was wrong.
But Dimitrios Gorfiatis, defending two of the Greeks, said they were trying to ‘shift the burden’ of responsibility.
He said: “The island of Corfu is fully aware of the gravity of what happened and the whole of Greece is fully aware of the gravity of what happened.
“I would like to tell the unfortunate parents the whole of Greece ached for what happened to them and the whole of Greece is by their side.”
He said his clients were ‘diligent’ and ‘ethical’ and ‘should not even have been in this room’.
The court heard the maintenance engineers warned the hotel several times that the boiler thermostats should not be ‘wired off’.
A Thomas Cook spokesman said: “This accident happened because of a unique and unforeseeable set of circumstances for which neither Richard Carson nor Nicola Gibson are responsible and should not be blamed in any way.”
The prosecution of the two Thomas Cook reps has sent shockwaves through the travel industry which awaits this outcome of this trial with some trepidation.
Tour operators are already responsible in law for the health and safety of the product they sell and most properties, particularly the most popular, undergo tough safety inspections on a regular basis.
But the prospect of junior ranking members of staff being held legally responsible in the event of the death or injury of a holidaymaker would place a much greater burden of responsibility on tour operators and could threaten their ability to operate in certain destinations.
The case is likely to lead to further demands for more uniform and consistent health and safety standards for hotels to be agreed to cover the whole of the European Union.
The verdict in the case is expected on Tuesday May 4.