SIX MONTHS after the Hatfield trial commenced in January, and almost five years after the fatal derailment on October 17 2000, Mr Justice Mackay instructed the jury hearing charges of manslaughter against track maintenance contractor Balfour Beatty and five individuals to find all the defendants not guilty.
His decision came on July 14. Railtrack, since replaced by Network Rail, and its Chief Executive Gerald Corbett also faced corporate manslaughter charges, but these were withdrawn in 2004 before the trial started.
Balfour Beatty and the five employees of that company and Railtrack at the time of the accident still face charges under health and safety legislation, but these do not normally carry the risk of a prison sentence.
However, on July 18 lawyers acting for Balfour Beatty announced that the company had switched its plea to guilty on the single H&S count. Lawyers representing four of the five men also announced that they would not be calling any witnesses or presenting evidence on behalf of their clients. Nicholas Jeffries, the senior civil engineer responsible for rail maintenance at Balfour Beatty, said he would call one witness.
Although Mackay would give no reason for his ruling on the manslaughter charges, Ron Thwaites QC defending Balfour Beatty explained to the court that the company was admitting safety breaches by its rail maintenance division because these were ’significant when aggregated with failures on the part of others and/or with systemic failure in the railway industry’.
Johnathan Goldberg QC, acting for Jeffries, argued that blaming scapegoats such as his client was ’plain unfair’ when ’civil servants, politicians, the men with knighthoods who created the dysfunctional rail system go scot-free.’
The court had previously heard that the rail which broke up into more than 300 pieces under the train had been identified as defective 21 months earlier, and replacement rail had been placed on the track ready for relaying almost six months earlier. The case was continuing as we closed for press.
