Stage collapse charges are stayed
Judge rules justice system failed in allowing case to take so long
The father of the man killed when a Radiohead concert stage collapsed five years ago says a ruling Tuesday to stay the resulting charges against two companies and an engineer due to court delays is “beyond belief.”
Scott Johnson, a 33-year-old British drum technician, died in June 2012 when part of a massive stage structure crashed down just hours before the British band was due to perform at Downsview Park. Three others were injured.
“It’s hardly justice, I’m afraid,” said Ken Johnson, who works for a scaffolding safety association in the U.K., and has attended some of the previous hearings.
The stage was “clearly overloaded and you don’t need to be an engineer to see that,” he said in a telephone interview from Germany.
In 2013, entertainment company Live Nation, contractor Optex Staging and engineer Domenic Cugliari were charged with a total of 13 offences under provincial health and safety laws.
Those charges were stayed Tuesday when Ontario court Judge Ann Nelson ruled the justice system had failed in allowing the case to take far too long to come to trial. The inordinate delays, Nelson ruled, had violated the rights of those charged to a timely hearing.
“This case was a complex case that required more time than other cases in the system,” Nelson said in her 21-page judgment. “After allowing for all of the exceptional circumstances that were in play, this case still will have taken too long to complete.”
The Supreme Court of Canada, Nelson noted, had set a presumptive ceiling of 18 months for proceedings in provincial courts, and this case — which would have taken almost five years to complete if it had gone to a second trial — would have lasted three times longer than that limit.
In the spring, with the case set to wrap up after 40 trial days scattered over 14 months, the presiding judge, Shaun Nakatsuru, declared he had lost jurisdiction given his appointment to a higher court.
That decision led to a senior justice declaring a mistrial in May, and a new hearing was set to begin Tues- day and wrap in May 2018.
However, lawyers for Live Nation and Cugliari argued before Nelson last month for a stay in light of the delays. The parties agreed her ruling would also apply to Optex.
“It is important to emphasize that timely justice is not just important to persons facing charges,” Nelson said in her ruling. “It is also important to our society at large.”
A stay is a remedy of last resort given that it signals a “failure on the part of the administration of justice,” Nelson said.
The judge acknowledged her ruling would have a “negative impact” on the victims of the stage collapse, especially on Johnson’s family.
“No doubt, this decision will be incomprehensible to Mr. Johnson’s family, who can justifiably complain that justice has not been done,” Nelson said.
While Johnson said he wasn’t surprised by the decision, he said it’s “absolutely staggering” that it came down to a law, which came into effect after the case began.
“I quite like the idea, that the liberal nation that Canada is, that it wants to be fair across the board, but I don’t see any fairness in this judgment at all and I don’t see how anybody else can to be honest,” he said. “It doesn’t tell us why our son was killed and we’re none the wiser to be honest, as things stand, as to why he’s not here.”
“I’m not very happy about it, but I’m equally resigned to the fact that there doesn’t seem much we can do about it,” he added.
Live Nation, which has called what happened a “tragic incident,” was not immediately available when contacted by the Star.
Crown lawyer Dave McCaskill said he was not surprised by the stay decision given the current state of Canadian law.
He said it was too early to consider any appeal.
The collapse, which the prosecution blamed on inadequate safety measures, prompted Radiohead to put off part of its 2012 European tour.