Fuel crash trial THIS is what happened
I thought it was best to start a new thread so the true facts aren't lost in all the theories on the other thread.
The Press reports are wrong about why the case stopped.
I went to the court for the first day and got gripped. There were a few of us who went every day, including a retired BA Captain and a lawyer making notes.
The case stopped because the CAA prosecutor tried a dirty trick and it backfired big time.
Flying Lawyer wiped the floor with him and said the pilot couldn't have a fair trial now because of what the prosecutor did. The CAA lawyer came up with some rubbish but the judge wasn't having it and said Flying Lawyer could have time to advise the pilot and decide what they wanted to do.
The judge then turned to the CAA side and said if the trial stopped there could be a new trial with a different jury but he thought the CAA ought to "consider their position" about whether they should start again because of everything that had come out about the state of the Tech Log and because it was the CAA's fault the trial was ruined.
It was exciting with everyone waiting around wondering which way it would go. First we heard the CAA was going to go ahead with another trial if the defence stopped this one. Then we heard a Flying Lawyer was going to ask for the trial to stop and for the judge to make the CAA pay all the pilot's legal costs wasted defending this trial.
After the intermission, Flying Lawyer came back and said the trial should be stopped and the judge agreed. The CAA lawyer then said they'd decided not to go ahead with a new trial.
Flying Lawyer said he wasn't asking the judge to make the CAA pay the pilot's legal expenses. The judge looked surprised and so were we until Flying Lawyer said he'd done a deal with the CAA that if they dropped the case he wouldn't ask for them to pay the pilot's legal costs.
He asked for the pilot's costs to be reimbursed from some other fund so the pilot gets his legal costs back anyway.
I've never been inside a court before. It was fascinating and a real eye-opener about what happens if you're done by the CAA.
The CAA don't use independent experts, they use their own people. Their expert was very biassed and a lot of what he said was normal practice in GA was bollox. He was all cocky about visual checks and dipping tanks until he was cross-examined by Flying Lawyer. Then he just looked biassed and stupid.
We all started off on the CAA side but they were so unfair it was a disgrace. The CAA prosecutor was unfair all the time not just the dirty trick that backfired on him. He was trying to be all smarmy to the jury but it didn't take them long to see through him. They were giving each other looks and you could see they didn't like the way he was behaving. He was an A1 sh1t and got nailed by FL.
I started off thinking the pilot didn't have a hope in hell of getting off but after everything the defence brought out our vote in the gallery was the jury wouldn't have convicted him when the CAA didn't prosecute any of the other people in the chain who'd made mistakes. His mistake cost him 6 USG but the Tech Log was about 9 USG out even before that.
Maybe the pilot was lucky but the CAA behaved badly and deserved to lose. I've done a lot of GA flying over the years and things the CAA were saying were normal practice just weren't true.
We all thought it was a fair result.
Last edited by Datcon; 7th September 2003 at 23:08.