Coroners court: An inquest into families’ long waits

With 14 lawyers at one inquest and waits for answers that stretch into years, Nikki Macdonald investigates whether the coroners court is delivering grieving families a fair deal.

would have been sold for another two years.

As veteran lawyer for families Nigel Hampton, QC, puts it, ‘‘meanwhile harmful practices often continue without change or abatement or improvement – other deaths and/or injury may well result meantime. Why change something when no-one has pronounced you wrong? Bureaucratic inertia wins every time.’’

A 2016 law change was supposed to speed up the process, by cutting the number of mandatory inquests and reducing duplication with other agencies. But figures obtained under the Official Information Act show delays have instead got worse.

The coroners court has a target of 70 per cent of open cases being less than 12 months old. In 2017-18 more than four out of 10 cases were older than 12 months – the worst rate in six years. That’s 723 grieving families waiting more than a year for answers.

The average time to close coronial cases is 345 days, but that masks long inquest waits, because more than 90 per cent of cases are decided without a hearing.

The Justice Ministry could not say how long cases requiring an inquest took, but Stuff’s analysis of 70 published decisions from 2017 found those cases took more than twice as long – an average of two years. The longest – the death of Grant Smith in a car crash involving a driver who had a seizure – took 41⁄2 years.

Asked if it’s acceptable for families to wait years for resolution, Hampton says, ‘‘Emphatically no’’. ‘‘Families’ sufferings should not be needlessly extended. Coroners must take proper control of their procedures and remember the importance of timeliness. They need to crack the whip. And their verdicts should not be long-reserved and awaited works of art.’’

Lawyer Antonia Fisher, QC, who has represented families at coroners’ hearings for 20 years, says inquest delays are understandable when there’s a criminal process or major investigation by another agency, but they’re not the cases that concern her.

‘‘I’m just talking about ordinary cases where there’s been no real reason for the delay. It can sometimes take up to 2-3 years after the