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Justice has been a long time coming for Keith and Margaret Berryman. With their long-time supporter and lawyer Dr Rob Moodie, they were delighted to learn late last week that Justice Mellon had quashed a 1997 coroner's finding that the former King Country farmers were responsible for a
beekeeper's death when a swing bridge on their property collapsed. The man fell 30m to his death.
The Berrymans have long argued that any blame for the collapse of the bridge rests with the Army, which built it as an exercise for the Engineering Corps back in 1988.
It's been a terrible time for the Berrymans. First, the horror of Ken Richardson's death, then the coroner's finding that they were culpable because they had failed to properly maintain the bridge, and the attempt by OSH to prosecute them under the Health and Safety in Employment Act.
The Berrymans won the OSH battle, but ultimately the Government department won the war, because they lost their previously debt-free farm and now live in suburban Wanganui, suffering stress-related illnesses.
The Berrymans' case seemed clear-cut and they attracted many supporters. Some of them turned out to be fair-weather friends.
In 1998, the then leader of the Opposition, Helen Clark, vowed to fight for justice for the Berrymans. She agreed the couple had been persecuted by the Labour Department, that the National government had abandoned its traditional constituents by forsaking the farmers and promised that were she elected she would ensure they got justice. Talk is indeed cheap.
In 2001, the Berrymans were offered $150,000 compensation for emotional torment, lawyers' bills and their 600ha farm. They declined the offer.
Some of their supporters, though, have been there for the long haul.
Hugh de Lacy was a freelance journalist specialising in rural publications back in 1995. He was commissioned to cover the Berrymans' case and what started out as a job became a quest for justice.
As a journalist, De Lacy couldn't believe what he was seeing and hearing in the different courtrooms and ultimately wrote a book about the Berrymans' struggle called Into the Abyss: Death-Trap.
But he says the Berrymans would never have lived to see this day without the work of Moodie, aka Miss Alice. Moodie is extraordinary. Ever since he received a copy of the Defence Department's own report into the bridge collapse, he has wanted it tabled in court. It contains, he says, evidence the Army was at fault in the construction of the bridge, not the Berrymans for failing to maintain it.
The then Solicitor-General refused four requests for another coroner's inquest. Any ordinary man would have probably given up the ghost. Not Moodie.
But then, let's face it, he's no ordinary man. He has continued to fight on behalf of the Berrymans at considerable personal, professional and financial loss. Now, finally - 14 long years later - the Berrymans have seen the original coroner's finding overturned and the Army's claim that it was not at fault rejected.
The judge has ordered all parties to try to come to some agreement over the Berrymans' misfeasance suit, misfeasance being the wrongful exercise of lawful authority. As opposed to malfeasance, which is just plain evil-doing. I don't know. They might have had a case for the latter.
Anyway, hopefully within a matter of months, this David-and-Goliath battle will be over and consigned to the history books. And the Berrymans will be able to wake up from a 14-year nightmare.
