Editorial: Bridge affair becomes a tangled tale

A judgment rushed is often a judgment that is soon rued. Events that seem relatively straightforward have a way of gaining complexity as they unravel. Not that this stifles the frequent temptation to jump to conclusions when cases of apparently unfair treatment leap into view. As, for example, when a couple of rural battlers like Keith and Margaret Berryman are pitted David-like against officialdom.

The Berrymans have been battling since 1994, when a wooden suspension bridge leading on to their King Country farm collapsed, killing beekeeper Ken Richards. The Army designed and built the bridge but a 1997 inquest absolved it and largely blamed the Berrymans for the collapse. The couple, said the coroner, should have maintained the bridge better.

Subsequently the Berrymans have been seeking recompense after losing their farm because of the crippling cost of fighting an unsuccessful case brought against them by Occupational Safety and Health. A Government offer of $150,000 has been turned down. For a long time, their case attracted a modicum of media coverage. But it burst back into the spotlight last month when lawyer Rob Moodie claimed a secret Army report put the blame for the mishap squarely on faulty design and construction.

Conclusions were jumped to. If, so the reasoning went, the secret document did not damn the Army, why would it go to great lengths to have it suppressed? Dr Moodie fuelled this sentiment by saying the release of the report, by former Colonel George Butcher, would exonerate the Berrymans. When the Army refused to play ball - citing its principles for Army court of inquiry documents - he published it on the internet.

The report, however, is anything but straightforward. Indeed, by any objective reading it falls far short of Dr Moodie's advertising. As do recent statements by Mr Butcher, who has been released from an Army confidentiality agreement. He blames the bridge's collapse on a series of errors, only some of which are laid at the Army's door.

The report says the Army made design miscalculations but these were, by good fortune, self-cancelling. Arrayed against this are mistakes attributed to the Berrymans: the choice, for example, of untreated timber, which sharply reduced the life of the bridge; and the delay in replacing timber transoms with steel ones after Mr Berryman decided to do this. And, perhaps most importantly, Mr Berryman's failure to arrange adequate maintenance of the bridge, although he had signed an agreement with the Army acknowledging his responsibility for this.

To add further to the tangled tale, Mr Butcher has revealed the existence of another hitherto secret report, written by Works Consultancy for the Berrymans. It identified the cause of the accident as rot and decay, which, it says, was clearly visible on the transom beams that gave way as Mr Richards drove across the bridge. Dr Moodie has made much of the Army's failure to present its internal report to the coroner. The criticism is appropriate: in the interests of justice, military court evidence should not be kept away from other legal forums as a matter of principle. But, equally, why was the Works Consultancy document not given to the coroner?

The Government has asked the Solicitor-General to investigate if a new inquest should be ordered. That appears a sensible course. Clearly, the Army made mistakes. Its design shortcomings and the agreement to use timber chosen by Mr Berryman raise questions about the expertise of its engineers. But, equally, attention must be paid to the Berrymans' responsibilities, and to what degree they could, and should, have upheld them.

Helpfully for the Solicitor-General, relevant material is finally percolating to the surface. It has taken time, but such is often the case before a fair and reasonable judgment can be made.