I am not sure what point you are trying to make by distinguishing a "tribunal correctionnel" from a "cour d'assise".
I think I might add some more clarifications in this debate :
First of all I understand why all French readers of this forum are quite incensed, and that shock comes from one very meaningful difference between legal concepts between France and - apparently - most of Anglo-saxon countries :
one cannot translate *crimes* into French as it is only reserved for very serious felonies especially murder or high treason
The Continental engineer, and the airline, were tried for a *delit*, roughly translated as *law infringement* or at the most *misdemeanour*.
As already said, the French system works on an accepted responsibility for individuals as far as their knowledge of the law and the penal risks they incur if they breach it.
Without that collective agreement on a citizen's responsibility, there is no French law... Generally, at the higher courts, the lawyers' job will be to find ways of mitigating/reducing that responsibility in order to lessen the verdict.
That's the reasoning behind the sentence : Mr Taylor was a licensed *engineer* ( another bad translation from the French is *mechanic* for *mecanicien* ), with qualification papers to prove his professionalism and as an employee of Continental, he must have been au fait of the airline maintenance procedures and standards. He failed to comply to either of these responsibilities...and pays the consequences, i.e not a lot as the consequences being a small fine and a suspended jail sentence.
The same fine would have been slapped on any engineer caught doing the same shortcuts in his works by an official audit, regardless of the possible consequences.
Apparently, this tribunal correctionnel was able to hand down criminal sentences as well as apportion responsibility
As said above, it's quite obvious but one has to know that the maximum anybody risks getting in a verdict by the *Tribunal Correctionnel* is 10 years of imprisonment.
On the other hand, the usefulness of that court is to aportion responsibilities - and blame, whether we like it or not - as to the likely compensation claims from the victims' entourage.
After this verdict - provided it is upheld in the appellate court - the claimants can only turn for compensation, to the parties that have been judged responsible for the accident... and no one else.
I think that discussion here is concerned mostly with a distinction between criminal act, whereby one is set some kind of punitive sentence for committing the act (often fine or prison), and civil liability, which is concerned mostly with financial compensation to victims for the consequences of an act.
These two concepts derive from the same court verdict and one would be very wrong to separate them, unlike the so-called O.J Simpson case which gave us a glimpse of the US system, in which one could be criminally innocent in one court but legally guilty in another, which strikes us as a rather quaint system, only good to get rich lawyers richer and to maximize some rather scandalous financial claims.
Remember living in the glass house and the stone ?