ABSTRACT
The real significance of inadequate investigation by official investigative bodies is that there will be very little evidence in the police report to prompt the coroner to summon as witnesses directors or senior managers from the employing company. Witness statement helps shape the coroner’s perception of how the fatality occurred. Jan Leadbetter was killed on 16 July 1990 on a construction site, managed by Bovis plc, in central London. He fell down an unlit shaft. His sister, Yasmin Zimnowodski, wrote a letter to the coroner asking him to summon as witnesses Jan’s foreman, a union officer and a director of the company. The common coronial justification of this secrecy is that, were it otherwise, the press would get to deal with sensitive materials in an insensitive way. Such an argument, however, entails acceptance of the assumption that lawyers furnished with such information would pass such sensitive data to the press.
