The legal battle over journalist Evdokia Loizou’s occupational illness, caused by working conditions, concludes with the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) paying out over a million euros.
Special and general compensations amount to €925,000 plus interest and legal expenses.
Evdokia and her lawyer, Michalis Vorkas, have presented 18 witnesses, including doctors and four employees of the Labor Inspection Department.
To prove her case in court, two expert professors of medicine from abroad came to Cyprus: Vassilios Makropoulos from the National School of Public Health of Greece, a Professor of Occupational Medicine with specialties in cardiology and pathology, and Professor Michael G. Hanna, her treating physician from London, director of the Institute of Neurology in England, and head professor of Neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery.
The court recognized his international standing, as acknowledged by both the court itself and the judge who issued the decision at the Nicosia District Court.
The judge justified Evdokia, stating that “the plaintiff presents with post-encephalitic syndrome. It was also accepted by the court that the plaintiff presents symptoms consistent with viral encephalitis, a position strongly supported scientifically and fully by Professor Michael G. Hanna, a Neurology Professor.”
The judge accepted that Evdokia Loizou’s health problem is rare, extreme, and a very complex case.
According to the court’s findings, viral encephalitis is an infectious parasitic disease caused by the environment. This causes acquired brain damage leading to various neurological symptoms even in the long term.
It is clear from the court’s findings that Evdokia Loizou suffered great pain and distress for a long period, and the remaining effects continue to affect her quality of life, personality, activities, career, and daily life, imposing restrictions and prohibitions, even 17 years later.
The court found that the competent Cypriot authority for recognizing professional illnesses in Cyprus is the Labor Inspection Department and, as proven, Dr. Athanasios Athanasiou recognized her illness as professional based on European legislation and directives on safety and health at work in 2012, and this decision was never judicially contested by CyBC.
Thirteen years after the Labor Inspection Department’s decision, CyBC refused to accept the decision of the Labor Inspection Department before the court.
The court was not convinced by the physician witness from CyBC.
All witnesses of the journalist left positive impressions on the court, unlike the sole physician witness from CyBC, Elpidophoros Soteriades, who unsuccessfully claimed that there were no causal factors for Evdokia’s illness.
Although not a specialist neurologist, he unsuccessfully challenged all the doctors’ diagnoses. Remarkable are the court’s strict remarks regarding Soteriades’s specific references to Evdokia’s attire and unacceptable references to her personal life.
The court was not convinced, as stated by the judge, that everything he said in court was based on a professional opinion documented by a physician.
The judge stated that Soteriades’s testimony contained many inaccuracies, and generally, his approach to the judicial process and the questions asked did not convince the court that he had conducted thorough investigations and checks before reporting what he had said about the assessments he prepared regarding Evdokia.
Although he admitted he was not a neurologist and could not challenge the findings of neurologists, and that he did not conduct the examinations done by the neurologists, his interpretation that the post-encephalitic syndrome means that a diagnosis cannot be made was not adopted by any of the expert doctors presented before the court.
It was found that there was no risk factor connecting the plaintiff’s workplace with her illness.
However, it was admitted that she never went on-site to inspect the facilities of CyBC, nor did she have before her any of the reports, either from private consultants to whom CyBC resorted or from the Department of Labour Inspection regarding the conditions that existed in the CyBC premises.
Due to these conditions, Evdokia Loizou fell ill and continues to suffer to this day. The Court characterized as unfortunate the position of Dr. Elpidophoros Sotiriades that he did not seek evidence regarding the conditions in the CyBC workplaces because he did not believe they could offer him anything for his report.
The same happened regarding the way he justified his ignorance of the existence of reports from the Department of Labour Inspection that spoke about serious problems in CyBC workplaces from 2002 to 2014.
It should be noted that a neurologist, who had been evaluating Evdokia all these years and challenging the professors in London and all his colleagues, although called by the court, refused to testify at the trial, apparently when he was informed that the internationally renowned neurology professor Michael G Hanna had testified, to whom the Ministry refers Evdokia Loizou since 2010.
Even the mechanical engineer who conducted a study with findings about poor ventilation and air quality, and about the air conditioning on behalf of CyBC, was decided to have changed his position before the court.
The court did not accept his specific references regarding whether there was good air quality, while he insisted that the smell was bad and that the air conditioning system was no longer reliable and needed to be changed.
The court only adopted the findings of the report submitted by Evdokia as evidence.
The court stated that the witnesses from the Department of Labour Inspection were adamant that the source of risk, concerning cats, fleas, and pigeons, had to be removed at all costs and not efforts should be made to spray disinfect the facilities which they considered half measures.
It is a finding of the court and to this end a heap of evidence has been submitted that the Department of Labour Inspection conducted thorough checks on the CyBC premises. The officials of the Department of Labour Inspection reported to the court that the checks that had been made were disproportionately numerous.
There were dozens of reports from the Department of Labour Inspection exposing the various problems found in the defendants’ facilities, both regarding the building’s ventilation and the biological factors present.
It is also a finding of the court that successive recommendations were made to the defendants by the Department for compliance, which either were not followed at all by CyBC or the measures taken by CyBC were in the right direction but unsatisfactory.
The CyBC buildings were old, not adequately maintained, their ventilation and air conditioning systems also needed improvement, there were rodents and insects inside the ducts, studios, and various CyBC offices, while there was a huge number of cats around the CyBC premises, as well as pigeons and traces of their droppings everywhere.
The Department of Labour Inspection called on CyBC many years ago to appoint a safety officer with appropriate qualifications to help lift the violations.
However, the defendants took too long to take the necessary measures, appointing consultants to conduct assessments only in 2009.
They prepared a safety and health plan for the first time in 2012, while they had intervened after protests from employees and discussions on the matter in the House of Representatives, circulars from CyBC to its employees, filing a criminal case against CyBC in the Criminal Court, admission of responsibility by CyBC, and imposing a fine on it.
One of the two former directors of the Department of Labour Inspection who testified in court stated that from 2000 to 2012, 43 inspections were carried out by the Department, which are the most inspections ever conducted on a facility employing employees. He stated that the CyBC building was sick and emphasized that it was one of the worst building facilities he had ever seen.
Regarding the core of Evdokia’s testimony during the trial, the judge stated that it was genuine. She mentioned that her answers were a torrent, and that many times she burst into tears and expressed bitterness and disappointment as she reacted strongly even to the submissions of CyBC’s lawyer.
The judge, understanding her highly emotionally charged and heavily influenced psychological state due to her health ordeal, emphasized in her decision that she is a very intelligent woman.
It should be noted that Evdokia had to go through the psychologically draining trial for the second time: she testified for the second time, underwent cross-examination twice because unfortunately, her case was remanded, meaning it was retried from the beginning because the initial judge who started to try her in 2017 had been promoted to an appellate judge through the judicial process.
A clerk from CyBC’s accounting department, who was called to provide a full picture of the plaintiff’s benefits, emphasized that the journalist is still an employee of CyBC, included in the institution’s payroll, without, of course, receiving a salary.
