THE owners of an island volcano in New Zealand where 22 tourists and local guides died in an eruption had their criminal conviction for failing to keep visitors safe thrown out by a judge yesterday.

The ruling absolves the company from paying millions of dollars in restitutions to the families of those bereaved in the 2019 explosion on Whakaari and two dozen seriously injured survivors. 

Most of the 47 people on the island were US and Australian cruise ship passengers on a walking tour, along with their local guides.

The company, Whakaari Management — run by three brothers who own the active volcano on New Zealand's North Island — appealed their convictions for breaching New Zealand’s workplace health and safety law in a three-day hearing last October at the High Court in Auckland. 

They were found guilty in a 2023 trial.

The case hinged on whether the company — which granted access to the volcano to tourism operators and scientific groups, for a fee — should have been in charge of safety practices on the island under New Zealand’s workplace health and safety laws. 

Survivors told the 2023 trial that they had not been told the active volcano was dangerous when they paid to visit it. They were not supplied with protective equipment and many were wearing clothing that made their horrific burns more damaging.

In yesterday’s written ruling, Justice Simon Moore ruled that the company did not have a duty under the relevant law to ensure that the walking tour workplace was without risks to health and safety. 

Justice Moore wrote that he had not overlooked or minimised the “unquantifiable tragedy” of the episode.

“The 47 people who were on Whakaari at the time it erupted should never have been there,” he wrote. The fact that they were revealed “multiple systemic failures.”

The case, however, was decided on the particular law and facts and boiled down to relatively narrow legal questions, he said.