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Cliff Buddle

AN ill-trained and poorly supervised assistant engineer was yesterday cleared of manslaughter over the collapse of a construction site lift which killed 12 workers.

   As he left the High Court, Wong Hon-sang, 25, said he had been made a scapegoat for Hong Kong's worst construction site disaster.

    The company who employed him, Ajax Engineers and Surveyors Ltd, has already pleaded guilty to corporate manslaughter in the first case of its kind in the territory.

   But Mr Wong, described by his barrister Simon Westbrook as 'the smallest cog in the Ajax machine', was the only representative of the company to face the manslaughter charge personally.

    Mr Justice Duffy directed the jury to return a not-guilty verdict at the end of the prosecution case.

    The judge said Mr Wong, who examined the lift and certified that it was safe, breached his duty of care to the workers who were to use it. His negligence may have contributed to the tragedy.

    But Mr Wong's lack of proper training, instruction and supervision by the company meant he could not be convicted of manslaughter, Mr Justice Duffy said. He directed that the defendant be discharged.

    The engineer smiled and thanked the judge before walking free from the dock. He shook hands with his lawyers.

    'I am very happy and relieved,' Mr Wong said outside court. 'I feel I have been made a scapegoat. I have had a very hard time for the past two years.'    Mr Wong's trial was made more stressful by events not related to the case.

   A Legal Aid Department clerk helping take instructions from him died in an apparant suicide and then the barrister representing him, Rodney Pritchard, collapsed on his way home from court and had to withdraw from the case. He was replaced by Mr Westbrook.

    Mr Wong is the second defendant in the 11-week trial to be cleared. Last month Hui King-leung, a technician with D and N Engineering and Equipment Ltd, walked free when the prosecution offered no evidence against him.

    Two workers remain on trial. Tam Ping-cheong, a site safety supervisor, and Kwong Tim-yau, a technician; both deny manslaughter. The trial is expected to end next week.

   The prosecution case against Mr Wong was that he failed in his duty to carry out a proper safety check on the lift at the site in Java Road, North Point.

    He was said to have been properly qualified in the sense that his superiors had instructed him in the correct method of examining passenger hoists, in particular of crucial parts such as the pinion and the emergency brake.

    But Mr Justice Duffy told the jury: 'No such evidence was adduced and it became clear that in the firm Ajax there was no formal training or proper instruction and there was minimal supervision of its assistant engineers.

    'You have to come to the conclusion he was never properly instructed, trained or supervised. Then, in all the circumstances, as a matter of law, you cannot come to the conclusion he was grossly negligent and therefore guilty of the crime of manslaughter.'   The lift plummeted from the 20th floor at the Java Road site on June 2, 1993.

    All 12 workers inside were killed when the hoist smashed into the third-floor podium and became a mangled heap.

    The court heard that Mr Wong had inspected the lift on only one occasion, when it was installed on February 25, 1993.

      The trial continues.



Lift case engineer cleared by judge