The Créteil Criminal Court sentenced, on Tuesday, January 24, the collector and restorer of old films Serge Bromberg to five years in prison, four of which were suspended, for the fatal fire in a building caused by his old highly flammable film reels in 2020. This one-year prison sentence will be arranged in the form of house arrest under electronic surveillance, the court said.
For many years, Serge Bromberg had stored, without authorization, old film reels made of cellulose nitrate in a room under an inhabited eight-storey building in Vincennes, in the Val-de-Marne. These reels, which absolutely must be kept cool, caught fire on the night of August 10, 2020, in the midst of a heat wave, when the air conditioning was not activated in the room. Even though many residents were on vacation at the time, the disaster killed two people.
During the 2 days of hearings, Serge Bromberg fully acknowledged his responsibility in this terrible fire. He was found guilty of manslaughter, involuntary injury, endangerment of others and involuntary destruction of property by fire. The sentence to which he was subjected is more severe than the requisitions of the public prosecutor, who had asked in November for four years in prison, three of which were suspended. His company, Lobster Films, was fined 150,000 euros, in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecution.
Having come in large numbers to attend the deliberations, the civil parties expressed their regret at not seeing the condemned prisoner. "For victims, it will never be acceptable to see that someone who killed their loved one will never go to prison. It would be important for Mr. Bromberg to retire from public life," reacted the lawyer of the family of one of the deceased, Elsa Crozatier. "We are considering whether to appeal or not, these are not decisions that we take lightly," Serge Bromberg's lawyer, Emmanuel Mercinier stated.