There used to be wording inside of the copies of the rules and reg's relative to the conduct of anything aviation, that basically said that an ATS officers obligation of a duty of care would supercede anything written as a rule or regulation.
Does that little paragraph still get a guernsey these days, or did that get left out in all of the re-writes after all of the reform implementations?
What a bloody sorry state of affairs this has turned into.
I do hope that a snivelling apology from Dick Smith is NOT going to be the only reward for the two controllers ...