The Court of Appeal has thrown out a second bid by a fishing company to avoid paying half a million dollars in total to the families of three fishermen who drowned when their trawler sank.
The 16 metre steel fishing trawler Jubilee sank in October 2015. Photo: SUPPLIED
Terry Donald Booth, 55, of Nelson; Paul Russell Bennett, 35, of Motueka and Jared Reese Husband, 47, of Timaru died when the Jubilee, a 16 metre trawler, sank off the coast of Canterbury in the early hours of 18 October 2015.
It is believed the crew were asleep in the wheelhouse when the trawler's fish room began filling with water and there was no high water level alarm to alert them.
While a mayday call was issued, they did not have time to escape and there were no survivors.
Lyttelton-based Ocean Fisheries, which owned the Jubilee, pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the crew's safety.
In September 2020, the High Court ordered the company to pay reparation for emotional harm totalling $505,000 to 19 individuals who were either partners, children, parents or siblings of the dead men.
Partners and children were awarded $40,000 each, while others received varying amounts.
The court awarded a further $230,325 for economic harm and fined the company $46,000.
The company appealed against the sentence of reparation, arguing it was "manifestly excessive" - but it was upheld by the High Court last August.
In its new application for leave to appeal, Ocean Fisheries said the judges' approach in awarding compensation to individual victims rather than on a "per family" was a radical departure from previous cases and added up to an unfairly excessive sum.
However, in a written judgement just released, the Court of Appeal has declined to hear the case.
Judges Collins, Lang and Mallon noted there was nothing under the Sentencing Act or case law which precluded the approach taken in the present case and required reparation to be awarded on a "per family" approach.
"We also consider that rigid adherence to any particular sentencing approach in this context is likely to lead to difficulties.
"Sentencing courts must be free to impose sentences that best meet the circumstances of the case. This is especially the case given the fact that an order for reparation requires the quantification of intangible harm, for which there cannot be a tariff case."
The original reparation decision had been largely driven by the facts of this particular case, which involved three primary victims each of whom had what the High Court judge had described as "a complex web of family relationships".
Furthermore, both the district court and the High Court had considered whether the total penalty imposed (the reparation plus the fine) was appropriate to the circumstances of the offending and the offender and concluded that it was.