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Old 30th Jan 2008, 09:57
  #209 (permalink)  
Taildragger67
 
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Can we please move past the Privy Council judgment?

The PC did not examine Mahon's findings as to cause as they were not put before it. The judgment makes that explicit in a section headed "The limits on the matters decided on the appeal to this Board" (at p.836).

That section contains the passage:

The Royal Commission Report convincingly clears Captain Collins and First Officer Cassin of any suggestion that negligence on their part had in any way contributed to the disaster. That is unchallenged. The judge was able to displace Mr. Chippindale's attribution of the accident to pilot error,
(my emphasis)

and also (at p.837):

The judge's report contains numerous examples and criticisms of A.N.Z.'s slipshod system of administration and absence of liaison both between sections and between individual members of sections in the branch of management that was concerned with flight operations. Grave deficiencies are exposed in the briefing for Antarctic flights; and the explanation advanced by witnesses for the airline as to how it came about that Cap-tain Collins and First Officer Cassin were briefed on a flight path that took the aircraft over the ice-covered waters of McMurdo Sound well to the west of Mt. Erebus but were issued, for use in the aircraft's computer, as the nav track a flight path which went directly over Mt. Erebus itself, without the aircrew being told of the change, involved admissions of a whole succession of inexcusable blunders by individual members of the executive staff. None of this was challenged before their Lordships. No attempt was made on behalf of A.N.Z. to advance excuses for it.

These appalling blunders and deficiencies, the existence of which emerged piecemeal in the course of the 75 days of hearings, had caused the loss of 257 lives
(my emphasis)

It is clear from these passages that the PC in no way questioned, challenged or otherwise threw any doubt on Mahon's findings of fact as to the cause of the crash itself. Further, the PC makes it clear that no other party sought to do so (or indeed has ever sought to do so, except perhaps on PPRuNe... ).

The appeal was simply over what Mahon said in his paras 376 and 377 about actions which were purported to have taken place well after the crash and which can be separated from it. He had no right to make such a finding. It was outside his terms of reference and, under NZ case law, he was not (could not) enquiring into a crime (Cock v A-G (1909) 28 NZLR 405). If someone called me a criminal when they had no right to do so and could not substantiate their claim (and the PC points out (at p.839) that the claims were investigated by police), then I would challenge that claim. That is all the PC looked at, because that is all that they were asked to look at.

Had any of the individuals fingered by Mahon have had an argument with his findings as to the cause of the crash, they had, and still have, plenty of opportunity to challenge them. They have never done so.

So can we please now move on and leave the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council out of it?

Last edited by Taildragger67; 30th Jan 2008 at 12:31.
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