THE public and the media consistently misunderstand the purpose of inquests, a Court of Appeal judge said yesterday.
Mr Justice Mortimer was giving his reasons for dismissing a coroner's bid to reinstate lack of care verdicts in the death of two China Light and Power (CLP) engineers, killed in a gas explosion at the Castle Peak power station in Tuen Mun on August 28, 1992.
He said juries were pressed to bring in lack of care verdicts to influence any claims by a deceased's family against an employer.
'This is wholly objectionable,' Mr Justice Mortimer said. 'The sooner the public and the media can be brought to realise that it is not the purpose of a coroner's inquest to establish whether, and to what extent, some third party was to blame for the accident the better.
'It is widely and quite wrongly believed that the main purpose of a coroner's inquest . . . is to lay the foundation for a civil claim for damages against any person who, in the opinion of the coroner's jury, was to blame for the deceased's death.' Coroner's juries are, in fact, directed not to embark on this task.
The question of blame was for the ordinary courts and not the coroner's courts, Mr Justice Mortimer said.
The findings of a coroner's court were not relevant to any issue which the ordinary courts had to determine, he said.
