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Families withdraw judicial review in Lamma ferry disaster case
The High Court said the legal challenge ended after the four plaintiffs told the court they would not continue, after legal aid for the review was rejected.
Families of victims of Hong Kong’s Lamma ferry disaster have withdrawn their application for a judicial review of a coroner’s findings, bringing an end to a long legal fight, the South China Morning Post reports. High Court Judge Herbert Au-yeung Ho-wing said proceedings had ceased after the plaintiffs informed the court two days earlier that they would not continue the challenge.
The four plaintiffs, named by the outlet as Alice Leung Shuk-ling, Leung Ka-yan, Philip Chiu Ping-chuen and Tsui-keung, filed their application in April following an inquest verdict over Hong Kong’s deadliest maritime accident in recent decades. The Lamma IV sank on October 1, 2012, after it was hit by the catamaran Sea Smooth near Lamma Island, killing 39 people. The vessel was carrying 124 HK Electric employees and their relatives to watch National Day fireworks over Victoria Harbour.
The outlet reports that the families had to stop because their application to the Legal Aid Department for this judicial review was rejected. In March, coroner Monica Chow Wai-choo ruled the deaths were unlawful, citing gross negligence by the ships’ two coxswains, while also ruling that the absence 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.