Sunken ferry trial will fall short: lawyer

The criminal trial of the navigating officer charged in the 2006 sinking of aB.C. ferry won't addressthe larger issuesofresponsibility that a public inquiry would and leave many questions unanswered, said the lawyer for the daughters of one of two people killed in the incident.

Karl Lilgert was charged Tuesday with criminal negligence in the deaths of Gerald Foisy and his common-law wife, Shirley Rosette. Lilgert was the navigating officer on the Queen of the North when it sank March 22, 2006,after crashing intoGil Island off the northwest coast of B.C., about 140 kilometres south of Prince Rupert.

Foisy and Rosette were the only people aboard the vessel who did not survive out of a total 101 passengers and crew members. They are believed to have gone down with the ship, but their bodies were never found.

'This is a criminal trial; this is not an inquiry.' Peter Ritchie, lawyer for victim's family

Foisy's two daughters settled a lawsuit with BC Ferries last year for $200,000 after their lawyer said legal costs were making it impossible to proceed to trial.

Lawyer Peter Ritchie complained at the time that the settlement meant many of the questions about what went wrong that night wouldremain unanswered.

On Tuesday, he said hewas skeptical that a criminal trial would change that.

"I think you might find out more about it, but you have to bear in mind this is a criminal trial; this is not an inquiry, and the frame of reference is very much different," Ritchie said in an interview.

"I would expect a whole variety of issues which will never see the light of day."

Ritchie said those issues include assessments of the ferry operator's rescue procedures, crew training and discipline policies.

"I would suspect that a lot of these issues would not arise [in a criminal trial]," he said.

Officer admits responsibility but not negligence

Lilgert plans to plead not guilty, said his lawyer, Glen Orris.

"He doesn't deny that he is responsible for what happened," said Orris. "He was the person in charge of the ferry at the time that it ran aground, so clearly, he's the one that's responsible.

"But my view is the mistake or mistakes he may have made don't amount to criminal negligence."

The Transportation Safety Board found in its report on the incident that there were only two crew members on the bridge, and they failed to make a crucial course correction,which is what causedthe ship to hit Gil Island.

Navigation equipment that would have warned of a collision had been turned off weeks earlier.

The report said quartermaster Karen Bricker and Lilgert, the fourth officer, had recently ended a relationship, and it was their first shift alone together on watch since the break-up.

The safety board said the two were engaged in a personal conversation while the ship was on its collision course.

Bricker and Lilgert, along with Second Officer Keven Hilton, who was on a scheduled lunch break at the time of the collision, were all fired.

Orris wouldn't comment on what Lilgert is up to now.

"Obviously, a tragedy like this, Karl is going to carry this around for the rest of his life," said Orris. "You can't cause people to have lost their lives and not carry that around with you."

Four-year investigation

The criminal justice branch of the Ministry of Attorney General said the four-year investigation has been a difficult and detailed one, although it didn't elaborate on why Lilgert was charged but Bricker wasn't.

"Mr. Lilgert has been charged on the basis that he was the navigating officer responsible for steering of the vessel at the time of the incident," the branch said in a news release.

"The available evidence does not support the laying of charges against anyone other than Mr. Lilgert."

Bricker's lawyer, Christopher Giaschi, declined to comment or to speculate why she wasn't charged.

"She was just a deckhand," he said.

The president and CEO of BC Ferries, David Hahn, said he couldn't comment on the charge.

Many lawsuits not settled

"Hopefully, the families who lost their loved ones and the other people that were on the vessel that night will get some closure," Hahn said in an interview.

"I think our work on this ended some time ago."

A spokeswoman for the provincial transportation minister said he wouldn't be commenting, either, and referred questions to the Criminal Justice Branch.

Three passengers who survived the sinking were given small court settlements for psychological distress and physical injury in acourt ruling last year, including $14,000 for a commercial fisherman who said the sinking left him afraid of the water.

Two other passengers received nothing, but they are appealing the ruling.

Forty-four passengers still have their cases before the courts.