On Monday, the regional court in Žilina awarded the family of a man who was killed by a bear in the Low Tatras last year in compensation in the amount of almost 1.5 million crowns, including the children who are already of legal age. This is a landmark judgment. The money must be paid to them by the Ministry of the Environment.
The Ministry of the Environment must pay tens of thousands of euros to the relatives of a 57-year-old man who was killed by a bear in the Low Tatras last year, in addition to the mandatory compensation to his surviving wife. The regional court in Žilina decided that the state must pay a total of 60,000 euros (less than 1.5 million crowns) in non-pecuniary damage to the deceased’s widow and two daughters.
Given that the current legislation grants this right only to minors, the courts created a new precedent with this decision, according to the Slovak news website tvnoviny.sk. According to the courts, the state does not care enough about the safety of people in nature, for which it must bear responsibility.
According to its spokeswoman Anna Dudová Záborská, the Žilina Court confirmed the previous judgment of the District Court in Rožomberok, which awarded the victim’s wife EUR 30,000 in compensation and each daughter EUR 15,000, writes the Slovak TV website TA3. He also recalled that the case of the 57-year-old man was the first in modern Slovak history when a person died in a bear attack.
The tragedy happened last year in June near the village of Liptovská Lúžna. The man went for a walk in the woods, where he was found dead with injuries that suggested he had been attacked by a bear, which was later confirmed by an autopsy. “The man had injuries on his head, neck and side that were caused by being bitten. Fresh traces of a bear were found at the site of the discovery,” said Marína Debnárová, spokesperson for Lesů SR at the time.
According to the study, bear attacks in Slovakia cannot be caused by their overpopulation:
TN.cz
