ABSTRACT
The generic group was very important to the research objectives of setting the Hillsborough and Marchioness disasters and their respective legal processes in broader socio-legal and policy contexts. Building on the themes of Chapter 3 and the work of Day et al, 1995, the interviews with Suzanne Burne and Simon Pearl provided information on the Law Society Working Party on Group Actions and the challenges facing mass actions and the Legal Aid Board in the 1980s and early 1990s, alongside John Cooke who, as an academic and barrister, was interviewed about the principles, cases and policy decisions which assisted the researcher in setting the Alcock PTSD Hillsborough cases in their broader theoretical, legal and policy contexts. Ms Debbie Coles, Co-Director of Inquest and Mr Terry Munyard, barrister, were approached regarding their expertise and experience over many years of inquests into controversial deaths in various contexts – in custody, at work, in creeping and sudden disasters in an attempt to throw light on the major themes of Chapter 5 and continue to develop a foundation of problems of contemporary inquests into controversial individual deaths in order to compare such problems with those facing mass disaster inquests of the late 1980s and early 1990s. In addition, it was an opportunity to explore issues around the development of inquest law through judicial review and ideas about legal reform of inquests.
