Six years after the deaths of five residents of the Lherm nursing home, near Toulouse, the family is still awaiting trial

Five elderly people living in the La Chêneraie nursing home died on 31 March 2016 after eating dinner and 21 people were hospitalized with food poisoning. Four people have been charged but no trial date has been set and the families are distraught.

“This is a question of justice for my mother and to make this happen, because this must never happen again.”assured France Inter on Friday, November 21, Céline Courvoisier, who lost her 73-year-old mother to serious food poisoning, on March 31, 2019, at the La Chêneraie nursing home in Lherm, near Toulouse (Haute-Garonne). Five people died and 21 people were hospitalized.

The Minister of Health at that time, Agnès Buzyn, then came there and made a promise “transparency and truth” to the victim’s family. Since then, despite four indictments against the agency, the investigation has stalled. The families and 55 civil parties in this case began to lose hope of one day getting justice for their dead loved ones.

Céline Courvoisier can’t wait for the trial. He finally wrote a letter to the investigating judge last month asking: “Why do we have no news? No official calendar? Why is nothing happening in this case?” he was desperate.

In February 2021, a summary of researchers showed the failure of the warming cupboard, which led to the proliferation of bacteria in food. Since then, there have been four indictments, the most recent a year and a half ago. But that is far from satisfactory, according to Nicolas Raynaud de Lage, a lawyer for the Courvoisier family. “We lost senior executives, givers of orders who worked closely with subordinates, who may have acted badly, but were not decision makers.”he assured.

Among those charged is the former director of the nursing home, who accepted his culpability, according to his lawyer, but expected the same from his former bosses at the Omega and Korian groups, who were successive owners of the nursing home. Korian offered compensation to the families against the withdrawal of the complaint, assured Me Alexandre Martin, a lawyer for one of them. “This has been considered, but of course we are against it. Our clients want a trial to be held, for those responsible to be brought to justice.”he explained to France Inter. The request to overturn the measure is still in progress, the Toulouse prosecutor’s office told France Inter, with investigative judges each handling around a hundred cases.