Manslaughter cases fail
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by Ian Wylie
• Road safety campaigners are demanding a review of the way serious lorry accidents are investigated after the manslaughter trials of two transport managers—the first trials of their kind—collapsed on the same day.
Last week a judge at Newcastle Crown Court acquitted Eric Preston, the former transport manager of Skiptonbased Fewston Transport. ln September 1993 a loaded Foden tipper operated by Fewston crashed and killed six people in the West Yorkshire town of Sowerby Bridge.
Initially the Crown Prosecution Service only brought the relatively minor charge against Fewston of operating a vehicle with defective brakes. But pressure from relatives of the victims prompted the CPS to subsequently charge Preston with manslaughter.
However, in a lengthy written decision Mr Justice Hooper said there was no chance of a conviction because of the length of time the case had taken to come to court. He was also worried by the poor state of technical evidence about the braking assemblies on the lorry. Instead of retaining the critical parts from the crashed truck, the police had returned them to Fewston managing director Tony Eyers.
Hooper was particularly concerned that the police constable who initially checked the crashed lorry was unwell and unable to give evidence about his findings.
During Preston's trial, the jury heard that the 63-year-old driver of the truck had only been driving 32-tonne tippers for a few months.
The court was also told that when the constable examined the vehicle the following day he stripped the front axle and wheel assemblies. This made it impossible for the pushrods, and ultimately the condition of the brakes, to be measured. Servicing records and mechanics' diaries, which had been examined by the police in 1994, had been mislaid.
On the same day that Preston was acquitted, another haulage manslaughter case suddenly collapsed. This prosecution was brought against the owners of a lorry which killed a schoolgirl at the Dartford Crossing.
Brian Nobes and Susan Morgan, who ran the Northamptonshire-based catering firm SCM, were cleared of manslaughter after the judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to continue.
The reason put forward for the crash had been brake failure, but Mr Justice Collins told the jury at Maidstone Crown Court that driver error could not be ruled out.
Road safety campaign group Brake reacted angrily to the collapse of both trials and blamed the CPS for not treating road accidents seriously enough. Executive director Mary Williams says: "We believe there must be an urgent review of the way such manslaughter cases are treated." Williams plans to raise the matter with Transport Minister Baronness Hayman when they meet next week, Stephen Kirkbright of solicitors Ford & Warren, who represented Preston, agrees that the quality of investigation left much to be desired. He believes the Government should respond by setting up rapid-response accident investigation teams around the country.
At present Vehicle Inspectorate experts are called in where police do not use their own vehicle examiners.