Families of victims who died in Hong Kong’s Lamma ferry disaster 13 years ago have filed an application for a judicial review against a coroner’s findings in an inquest, saying the conclusions showed irrationality and failed to weigh contradictory evidence.
Four individuals lodged the application in the High Court on Wednesday. They acted without lawyers.
They want the court to quash the coroner’s findings that a missing watertight door on the ill-fated Lamma IV ferry was a deliberate design choice, not an oversight. They are also seeking a fresh inquest on that issue.
Thirty-nine people died in the disaster on October 1, 2012, when the Lamma IV was hit by the catamaran Sea Smooth near Lamma Island, making it Hong Kong’s deadliest maritime accident in decades.
Lamma IV was carrying 124 HK Electric employees and their relatives to watch the National Day fireworks over Victoria Harbour.
The application names the coroner as respondent. The city’s director of marine, Cheoy Lee Shipyard, HK Electric and Hong Kong and Kowloon Ferry, operator of the Sea Smooth, are listed as interested parties.
The 44-day inquest held last year returned a verdict of unlawful killing of the 39 in January, pointing to gross negligence by the ships’ two coxswains, while ruling on issues relating to the circumstances of the crash.
Coroner Monica Chow Wai-choo ruled that the omission of a watertight door on the underdeck of the sunken Lamma IV was deliberate and compliant with regulatory requirements when the vessel was built in 1994 and 1995.
But some victims’ relatives had earlier argued that the absence of a watertight door was the main reason for the ship’s rapid sinking and the tragic loss of lives, citing marine experts’ unanimous opinion that the door would have allowed the ship to stay afloat until rescuers arrived.
The judicial review applicants said in their submission that the coroner did not consider matters which she was bound to and failed to exclude from her consideration matters which were irrelevant.
They argued the coroner ignored contradictions in witness testimony, wrongly treated the evidence of two key witnesses, Ken Lo Ngok-yang and John Lim, as corroborative, and overlooked drafting patterns in the ship’s plans.
Lo, a director of Cheoy Lee Shipyards, oversaw the building of Lamma IV and testified that leaving out a watertight door was a conscious design choice.
Lim, a draughtsman involved in preparing the vessel’s plans, gave evidence that the coroner treated as corroborative of Lo’s account.
The coroner’s inquest was held after two relatives of victims convinced the Court of Appeal that it was in the public interest to investigate the incident once again, even though the causes of the tragedy had been largely identified in previous inquiries.
The four applying for the judicial review are Alice Leung Shuk-ling and Leung Ka-yan, both next of kin of victim Pieta Leung Ka-kit, Philip Chiu Ping-chuen, who lost his elder sister Chiu Siu-king in the disaster, and Tsui Keung, next of kin of victim Tsui Chi-wai. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
