Nine years after a serious train accident in France with seven dead and dozens injured, a court found the state railway SNCF guilty of negligent homicide and bodily harm. The court in Évry-Courcouronnes found on Wednesday that poor maintenance by the SNCF was the cause of the disaster. It sentenced the railway to a fine of 300,000 euros, as reported by the newspaper "Le Monde". A railway worker responsible for repair work at the accident site and the SNCF network company were acquitted.

On July 12, 2013, an IC train with 385 passengers derailed at high speed on a faulty switch in Brétigny, south of Paris. Train cars overturned and were catapulted onto a train platform, where they hit waiting commuters. It was one of the worst rail accidents in France in years.

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As the court emphasized, the accident would not have happened if the railways had maintained the tracks correctly, recognized the defect in good time and replaced the points. In the process with 184 joint plaintiffs, Deutsche Bahn had cited the possibility of a material defect as the cause of the catastrophe.

In their pleading, the public prosecutor's office accused the railways of having made a conscious decision to prioritize the return on the safety of their passengers. It was not an unforeseeable accident, but a failure in the maintenance of the tracks.

Poor maintenance was quickly seen as the cause of the disaster. It sparked a debate in France about the security of the rail network and the wrong focus of investment on the fast TGV trains.