Cazatou - my thoughts.
House Of Lords Committee to review Chinook ZD 576 crash
332. Can you tell me the circumstances in which you felt it necessary to take legal advice in this case?
A. Because I realised the enormity of the decision I was about to make and I felt it right to take legal advice.
333. What sort of legal advice did you feel would help you? You were deciding the facts, were you not?
A. I was deciding on the facts but I wanted to know basically if the definition of "no doubt whatsoever" was a definition which was achievable or not.
Day was about to make a decision on a BOI that he - as AOC - convened; he realised (see above) the enormity of his decision (which he must of made at that point using the guidelines that were applicable at the time) but he was sufficiently unsure of himself - so he chose to seek legal advice. Prior to that advice, Day was not confident of the facts to apply the rules to find Tapper/Cook grossly negligent.
Clearly, his legal advisor(s) managed to assuage him of any doubts that he may have had. That need by Day to seek a legal interpretation of guidelines that were straightforward to a layman needs to be clarified/challenged in an open forum. If the rules were ambiguous enough that legal advice was needed to achieve an administrative finding of grossly negligent, then the BOI process - as applied in this instance - could be perceived as been fundamentally flawed. Pulford applied the guidelines (without legal advice) and came to a different conclusion.
AA