‘Law is a game for wealthy people’: Lamma ferry disaster families drop challenge against coroner’s verdict

Family members of victims of Hong Kong’s 2012 Lamma ferry disaster, in which 39 people died, have withdrawn a legal challenge against a coroner’s verdict after reportedly being denied legal aid.

High Court Judge Queeny Au-Yeung on Wednesday dismissed an application for a judicial review of January’s coroner’s verdict, after the four bereaved family members who launched the challenge expressed a wish to drop their bid.

It means that all judicial processes arising from the fatal crash between the Lamma IV ferry and another vessel on October 1, 2012, have concluded. The disaster killed 31 adults and eight children – the worst maritime incident in Hong Kong since 1971.

The four family members – Alice Leung, Leung Ka-yan, Philip Chiu, and Ryan Tsui – previously lodged the legal challenge against Coroner Monica Chow’s verdict, which rejected a core demand by the bereaved families.

While victim representatives blame the tragedy in part on shipbuilders who did not follow design plans to install a watertight bulkhead door, Chow ruled in January that the Lamma IV would have sunk even if the door had been attached.

The door’s absence “did not constitute a design error nor amount to a breach of the regulatory requirements in force at the time,” Chow said in January as she delivered the verdict, AFP reported.

The coroner said the families were demanding “near-perfect scrutiny” from overworked inspectors and their demands were “impractical” and “unrealistic.”

‘A game for wealthy people’

The family members expressed outrage following the verdict hearing in January and, in April, filed an application to challenge Chow’s findings. They said the coroner had failed to consider inconsistencies in the testimonies of shipbuilders and contradictions in the vessel’s design drawings.

However, they decided to drop the challenge after being denied legal aid, according to local media.

Alice Leung, who lost her brother in the disaster, told media outlet The Witness that the families feared the lawsuit would incur huge fees and lamented that “law is a game for wealthy people.”

A coroner’s inquest was held last year, with 84 witnesses testifying over the span of 44 hearings. The proceedings were the hard-won result of a lawsuit by the families as the coroner’s court originally decided in 2020 that it would not investigate the incident.

Lamma IV, which had over 120 passengers on board, was chartered by the Hong Kong Electric Company to take staff to watch fireworks on China’s National Day in 2012. The other vessel, Sea Smooth, was operated by the Hong Kong and Kowloon Ferry Company and had more than 100 people on board.

The two captains involved in the crash were jailed in 2015 for nine months and eight years, respectively. Two government employees who failed to ensure lifejacket compliance on the vessels were also sentenced to prison terms.