Vienna - Survivors and relatives of victims of the Kaprun cable car fire in 2000 want to restart legal proceedings and are seeking 2 million euros (2.5 million dollars) of compensation per victim, their lawyer Gerhard Podovsovnik confirmed Wednesday. In 2005, an appeal court in Linz found 16 defendants not guilty of having caused the accident in November 2000, when a cable car at the Kitzsteinhorn glacier in the state of Salzburg caught fire in a tunnel, leading to the death of 155 skiers from eight countries.
The claimants are joining a lawsuit filed by the German engineer Hans-Joachim Keim, who accuses the technical experts hired by the court of concealing or distorting key findings.
If the experts were indicted and found guilty of having intentionally written false reports, a retrial could become possible.
For the German survivors and families from the Netherlands and Japan involved in the legal proceedings, the claimed damages represent a symbolic sum in order to send a signal to Austrian legal authorities, their lawyer said.
"They want to know whether someone was responsible and guilty," Pdovosovnik told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
After waiving their right for civil action against the cable car operator and other companies, all 451 survivors and victim's families settled for a total of 13.9 million euros of compensation in June.
