Creamie, I try not to get involved with the minutia of legal proceedings these days …
How can you possibly function each day without involving yourself in those minutia? Are you not frozen in fear by all that strict liability and all those impenetrable rules used by government bully boys to repress you?
[B]ut wouldn't any government (CASA) prosecution these days involve strict liability?
No. Not all offences are offences of strict liability. Some offences have a fault element as well as a physical element.
If so then the unsuccessful prosecution of the two QANTAS pilots for allegedly taking off at YMLT at night without the runway lights being on would be an example.
They weren’t prosecuted for a strict liability offence. They were prosecuted for reckless operation of an aircraft, endangering life. “Reckless” is a fault element. (As an aside, others have suggested that stalling tactics were used by Qantas, resulting in the matter being dismissed. Also as an aside, I wonder what all the “take me to court rather than take administrative action” brigade thought about the judge’s comment. The judge said disciplinary action against the pilots, such as suspension or retraining, “might have provided a more effective response to the needs of public interest and safety than a prosecution some six years later".)
Another would be the legal hounding of the commercial operator and his chief pilot for taking off from a road in South Australia as the nearby airport was under water. The last of that case that I heard was that it was on its way to the High Court. Their names completely escapes me now.
I’m not sure about that either.
Similarly, the prosecution of a private pilot in Tasmania in the late 1990s' for low flying would have been with strict liability applying. That was a successful prosecution.
Let’s count that.
The fact that an offence is one of strict liability does not mean that the prosecution has a hands-down winner. It still has to prove that the offence was committed and sometimes that proves very difficult indeed, even with witnesses.
Correct.
That’s why there are so few of them.
That’s my point.
So we’re up to two. Any advance on two?