Extras threaten to sue over Cruise film injuries

Aug 21, 2007, 16:38 GMT

Actors perform during the shooting of the film \'Valkyrie\' in front of the Ministry of Finance in Berlin, Germany, 18 August 2007. Parts of the street stay blocked until 20 August because of the filming. Tom Cruise stars in the film as Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg who plotted to kill Adolf Hitler. EPA/STEPHANIE PILICK

Berlin - Film extras injured in an accident on the set of the World War II drama Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise, threatened to sue the production company Tuesday unless they received compensation.

'Those responsible on the set acted with inhuman indifference to the lives and health of the extras,' said Ariane Bluttner, a lawyer for several of the 11 who were hurt.

She threatened to launch a class action suit in the United States if the US production firm United Artists did not compensate the injured in a 'quick and unbureaucratic' manner.

The claim for compensation came as Berlin health and safety authorities examined safety measures in force on the set, following the weekend accident.

On Sunday evening, 11 extras playing German soldiers were injured when the wooden side on their truck dropped down as they went around a bend and they fell onto the street. Cruise was not present at the time.

'We want to find out who was responsible for this failure,' Berlin health and safety head Robert Rath said. He said his department would be visiting the set of the film, which focuses on the German resistance to Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.

Whoever had told the extras to climb onto the truck, along with the director and whoever was controlling the filming at the time, were responsible, Rath said.

'Our experience is that in the film sector, safety is not given too high a priority, and health and safety rules are regarded as dispensable,' he said.

Only the lead actors and the expensive equipment were well looked after, Rath said.

He added, however, that he did not expect his department to threaten to stop filming.

One of the injured extras told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the production company had been alerted a week ago to defects on the truck but had failed to remedy them.

'The production firm played with our lives and our health,' said 36-year-old Alexander Klute, who suffered a bruised pelvis when he was thrown from the vehicle.

United Artists has not commented on the injuries.

In the film Cruise stars as the German nobleman, Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, a leader of the failed 1944 plot to kill Hitler.

The star has been staying in Berlin with his wife, Katie Holmes, and their infant daughter, Suri, during the shooting of the movie in the German capital and Brandenburg, the eastern state surrounding Berlin.

Valkyrie tracks the plot against Hitler, in which Stauffenberg, a colonel, planted a bomb in a briefcase at a briefing at Wolfsschanze, or Wolf's Lair, the German military high command in Eastern Prussia.

The bomb killed four people but left Hitler only slightly injured. Stauffenberg was arrested soon after the blast and executed early the next day.