View of Whakaari / White Island from a monitoring flight on 31 August, 2022. Photo: GNS
The owners of Whakaari White Island will have their appeal of the criminal conviction against their company which managed access to the volcano heard in four months' time.
The company managed access to the volcano when it erupted in 2019, killing 22 people.
The High Court in Auckland has set a date of 12 August for the hearing, for four days.
In a minute released on Friday, Justice Peter Andrew said the questions for appeal included whether the company overseeing the volcanic island was managing a workplace and therefore had a health and safety duty.
Five companies, including that of the volcano's owners, have been fined and ordered to pay millions of dollars in compensation for safety failings leading up to the deadly eruption in 2019.
In March lawyer James Cairney said he filed the notice of appeal in the High Court on behalf of the Buttle family.
Cairney said they were appealing the conviction, which found their company Whakaari Management had a safety duty to tourists visiting the island, as landowners.
"The reality is for the people involved with the company, the finding that there was this duty was inconsistent with what they thought," Cairney said.
"The fact that there was a duty hangs heavy on the family behind Whakaari Management. It hangs heavy because of the significant implications that there are from imposing a duty on a person essentially akin to a landowner granting rights of access to another person to conduct activities on their land."
The parties felt they were "wrongly charged" and had a right to test that, he said.
