Page 120 - When Things Go Wrong

VIII. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the members of the Working Party and its sub-groups for their
constructive engagement and hard work over the course of this project. I am
particularly grateful to sub-group chairs Sir John Goldring, Deborah Coles, Martin
Smith and Ken Sutton for their leadership and thoroughness in tackling our broad
agenda. Sir Peter Thornton QC is also to be commended for his leading role in
conceiving and developing our proposed special procedure inquest.

I am immensely grateful to our corporate partner Morrison & Foerster LLP for its
generosity in supporting the Working Party and providing us with pro bono research
assistance including the substantial comparative exercise on approaches in 21 other
jurisdictions. Thanks are due to lawyers Sonya L. Van de Graaff, Eliska Macnerova,
Kevin Roberts, Simon Arlington, Xun Ning Choong, and especially to Joseph
Donaghey for minuting our meetings.

Huge thanks are due to Pete Weatherby QC for his sustained assistance on the duty
of candour. We are indebted to the Institute for Government and to sub-group
member Marcus Shepheard for sharing with us at an early stage much of the
Institute’s thinking underpinning the 2017 report How public inquiries can lead to
change.

This project would not have been possible without the dedication and creativity of
JUSTICE Legal Director Jodie Blackstock. We are hugely indebted to our rapporteur
Robbie Stern, JUSTICE Senior Legal Fellow, for his immense contribution in
marshalling the evidence and in his invaluable assistance in the production of this
report.

We are grateful to JUSTICE Legal Fellows Siven Watt – for his assistance in
producing a “family walkthrough” for the Public engagement sub-group – and Abby
Buttle – for her analysis of the competing arguments regarding the duty of candour
and assistance in finalising this report. Thanks are also due to JUSTICE Senior Legal
Fellow Natalie O’Connell and interns Aymen Ati, James Aiken, Rebecca Bromley
and Rossen Roussanov for their assistance through the life of the project. This
Working Party was originally conceived by Chair of the JUSTICE Board, Walter
Merricks, and we appreciated his continuing engagement during the course of our
meetings.

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