We obtained the Ministry of National Defense’s obligation to pay moral damages totaling €525,000 for the parents and sisters of three of the victims of the aviation accident in Tuzla on July 5, 2010.

The appellate court’s decision comes 13 years after one of Romania’s largest aviation disasters, in which 12 soldiers died, and 2 were injured. The Bucharest Court of Appeal ordered the Ministry of National Defense, as the legal guardian, to pay moral damages totaling €525,000 to the plaintiffs – the parents and sisters of the victims of the aviation accident in Tuzla on July 5, 2010. Invoking force majeure as a foreign cause is not sufficient for the legal guardian of the aircraft to be exempt from liability.

We represented the families of three of the deceased soldiers in this case, through our colleague, lawyer Loredana Dumbravă.

Following the tragic aviation accident, two of Romania’s best and most promising divers and paratroopers, aged only 22 and 25, and one of the best pilots, a unit commander at the Air Force Application School in Boboc, Buzău County, who, at only 34 years old, trained generations of pilots, died.

Through the action filed with the Bucharest Tribunal, the plaintiffs – the parents and siblings of these victims, sought moral damages from the Ministry of National Defense, in its capacity as the legal guardian of the aircraft that crashed and caused the tragic death of these three individuals.

Both the first instance and the Bucharest Court of Appeal found that the conditions for tort liability for the act of the thing were met against the defendant, dismissing the Ministry of National Defense’s defenses regarding its exemption from liability since we are faced with force majeure.

In order to establish this, both the Bucharest Tribunal and the Bucharest Court of Appeal took into account the trauma suffered by these parents and sisters, who, for 13 years, tried to seek justice for their children and siblings and to compel the state, through the Ministry of National Defense, to be accountable for the poor conditions they provided for their soldiers – an aircraft over 45 years old, with technical deficiencies.

Despite the Ministry of National Defense’s defenses, which stated that soldiers, once they enter the military base, assume the risk of such events occurring, the plaintiffs’ lawyer argued that such a risk is assumed by these people when they participate in military operations, and in no way did the victims assume the risk of such an event occurring during a routine exercise.

Lawyer Loredana Dumbravă detailed before the courts the close relationships existing between family members, the lives of the three families before the accident, and how the event forever changed their lives, irreversibly affecting each family member.

The lawyer emphasized that the trauma suffered by the parents and sisters of the victims following the tragic aviation accident is ongoing – to be called to the morgue to identify what remains of your son/brother’s charred body is an image you will always live with, one you will never forget.

Such pain cannot be erased by the passage of time, as time often does not heal but intensifies the suffering by instilling a profound sense of longing, with the family feeling increasingly acute the absence of their loved one.

The damages awarded by the civil court represent compensation for the actual harm suffered by the relatives of these victims. Through this decision, the court recognized that the state, through the Ministry of National Defense, was poorly organized and allowed such a tragedy to occur by providing old and defective aircraft.

“Both the plaintiffs and we, as their representatives, hope that, as a result of this decision, the state will do what is within its power to ensure that the situation does not repeat itself, and that we no longer witness such tragedies that could have been avoided with minimal diligence,” said Loredana Dumbravă – Senior Associate at JGV.