Three names are synonymous with the fatal Cameron House fire – victims Simon Midgley and Richard Dyson, and porter Christopher O’Malley.
For the money men who own the hotel, via a Caribbean tax haven, their anonymous, lavish lives, continue unabated.
O’Malley admitted causing the blaze by placing ash inside a plastic bag and putting it inside a cupboard.
He admitted it was a fatal error and the rest of his life will be marred by guilt and shame.
O’Malley deserved punishment but he should not be the only individual photographed and named and shamed in a courtroom.
There were no individuals from management named in court documents or appearing in person in the dock.
Legal experts call it, placing the “invisible man” in the dock.
Cameron House had a turnover of £40million a year but it is minimum wage O’Malley who has faced moral repugnance.
There was not an identifiable name and face attached to those who profited from the hotel, where proper training procedures were not in place and fire safety warnings ignored.
Cameron House Resort (Loch Lomond), the owner and operator of the hotel, is an elusive entity obscured behind a PO Box in the Cayman Islands.
It was fined £500,000, a sum which will likely be paid by its insurance company and won’t dent the pockets of the millionaire owners.
If the families of Simon and Richard feel powerless, it is because they are.
There is no comfort for them at the end of a painful three-year legal process, there is no meaningful justice. Instead of being being given time to grieve, they must continue to fight for corporate accountability.
There are hundreds of relatives across Scotland who have met with the same frustrations, particularly when a death occurs in a workplace.
Scotland has the highest rate of workplace deaths in the UK, totalling 231 in the decade to 2019.
This doesn’t include incidents investigated by other regulators such as work-related deaths in the air or at sea.
No business in Scotland has been prosecuted under the offence of Corporate Homicide, since it was introduced in 2013.
Thousands of miles and remote jurisdictions see individual owners, hidden under impenetrable financial layers and evading accountability.
The law has been used in England and Wales but mainly against small companies where responsibility is easy to pinpoint.
The minnows can easily be found while the big fish are too slippery to catch.
Last week an attempt by Labour MSP Claire Baker, to amend the law around workplace deaths was voted down at the Scottish Parliament and didn’t even reach Stage two.
The proposed changes in the Bill would have enhanced existing offences of culpable homicide but it was argued, the Scottish Government did not have the authority to make changes.
Baker has claimed, the obstacle is an absence of political will.
Whatever the legal wrangles, the bottom line for victims and their families is the current legislation is not fit for purpose.
If it was, it would have been used by the Crown to secure justice for at least some of the hundreds of victims of workplace negligence.
Campaigning group Scottish Hazards, which has fought to amend the law on culpable homicide, claims there should have been about 20 prosecutions under the existing act by now.
The Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf has said he will examine the issue again in the next parliamentary session and he must.
The system as it exists neither serves society nor the loved ones of those who have died through corporate negligence.
It’s an injustice which must be addressed because unless company bosses fear personal liability and punishment, corporate killings won’t stop.
