While the tragedy in Genoa demands justice, some legal observers and defense representatives have raised concerns that the focus on individual executives may oversimplify a much more complex issue. The defense team for Giovanni Castellucci has argued that the former CEO relied on the expertise of Italy's leading engineers and that the collapse was fundamentally linked to an original design defect from the 1960s. By centering the trial on the criminal liability of specific managers, critics fear the legal system may be searching for a scapegoat rather than addressing the broader, systemic failures of the state and the industry.
There is a valid argument that infrastructure safety is a shared responsibility involving government regulators, engineering firms, and private operators. Critics of the verdict point out that the Transport Ministry also played a role in overseeing the highway concessions. By placing the primary burden of guilt on a few individuals, the court may be obscuring the need for a more comprehensive reform of how infrastructure is designed, inspected, and regulated at a national level. If the focus remains solely on punishing individuals, the underlying structural and regulatory weaknesses that allowed the bridge to deteriorate might remain unaddressed.
Furthermore, the complexity of the case, which involved 57 defendants and years of technical debate, suggests that pinning the blame on a single executive is a reductionist approach. The defense's intent to appeal highlights the ongoing disagreement over whether the collapse was a result of criminal negligence or an engineering failure that was not fully understood at the time. A fair legal process must ensure that accountability is based on individual actions rather than the public pressure to find someone to blame for a national tragedy.