A decision to jail six Italian scientists and a government official for manslaughter after they failed to give adequate warning of an earthquake has sent tremors through the New Zealand earthquake community.
But a New Zealand law expert says there would be no chance of a similar case occurring here.
"It just wouldn't happen," said Dr Chris Gallavin, Dean of University of Canterbury's law school.
He was stunned by an Italian regional court decision to jail the men who were found guilty yesterday of multiple manslaughter for underestimating the risks ahead of the magnitude-6.3 quake which killed 309 people in L'Aquila on April 6, 2009.
The group of seven, all members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, were also ordered to pay more than nine million euros in damages.
They were accused of making a falsely reassuring statement before the deadly quake after studying tremors that had hit the medieval city.
Their defence had argued that there was no way to predict major earthquakes, even in a seismically active area.
More than 5000 people, including 80 New Zealanders, signed an open letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano backing the defendants as they went on trial last year.
GNS principal scientist and geophysical statistician, Dr David Rhoades said the decision to prosecute scientists was "unjust".
"In my opinion, the most scientists can do is to estimate the probability of an earthquake occurring in a given space-time-magnitude window," he said at the time.
"Giving any kind of warning, or advice to the public of what to do in the light of such information, is the proper responsibility of government authorities, and not of their scientific advisors."
University of Canterbury quake expert Dr Mark Quigley also supported the scientists, saying that the "holy grail" of making accurate earthquake predictions, remains "elusive".
The decision has shocked seismologists and scientists around the world and drawn condemnation from the American Geophysical Union, but Dr Gallavin said the Italian court decision would not set a legal precedent in New Zealand.
Instead, he attributed the decision to a "quirk" of the Italian criminal justice system.
"Scientists [here] would have to have done an unlawful act, perhaps through gross negligence, or an omission, for manslaughter to be considered. It's not scientists that have killed the people - it's the earthquake that caused the deaths," he said.
"It's such an inexact science. I can't believe they could say with any certainty that people have acted on advice from scientists that has been so negligent that it exposed them to the earthquake.
"To attribute the deaths to the lack of information, or lack of advice, from scientists, would be very, very difficult."
The convicted men - scientists, Enzo Boschi, Giulio Selvaggi, Franco Barberi, Mauro Dolce, Gian Michele Calvi, Claudio Eva and senior Civil Protection Authority official Bernardo De Bernardis - have vowed to appeal the sentence.
