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Show Vail Gondola Charges Dismissed towner No. 4 because they were common. He also stated that before the gondola accident happened there were no standards governing repair, maintenance and retirement retire-ment of tramway cables. Kobay-ashi Kobay-ashi argued that the standards, were established after the accident. acci-dent. "I submit that there was no evidence of corporate negligence," negli-gence," he said. Vail Associates still faces several civil suits that have been filed. By Craig Horowitz courtesy Vail Trail All criminal charges against Vail Associates and three individuals indivi-duals were dismissed-this- week by Judge William Jones in District Court in Eagle. Following three consecutive days of testimony in the preliminary prelimin-ary hearing the judge ruled that District Attorney Jack Healy had failed to show probable cause to hold the defendants over for trial. The charges stemmed from the March 26, 1976 gondola accident here in which four people were killed and eight others injured. The three individuals named in the criminal complaint included William Sargent, former VA mountain manager, Life Maintenance Mainten-ance Supervisor Robert Momsen and Maintenance Man George Hudspeth. In his closing arguement the district attorney, himself, moved that the felony manslaughter and third degree assault charges against the three individuals be dropped. However, the district attorney did argue for holding Vail Associates over for trial on the lesser charge of criminially negligent homicide. The court did not agree and all criminal charge against the corporation were also dismissed. In his ruling on the corporation Judge Jones said, "I agree with Mr. Healy that the chain of command at Vail Associates was a less than desirable situation in that the person at the top did not know what the person at the bottom was doing and vice versa." The Judge added however how-ever that a "gross deviation from the standard of care of a reasonable and prudent man" did not exist. Healy argued that high level executives at Vail Associates knew nothing about a "critical situation" that existed with the gondola cable prior to the accident. He charged that the entire responsibility was placed on low level personnel at Vail Associates. He stated the upper level management should have been responsible and informed of what was taking place. Fomer Vail Associates lift maintenance crewman Shorty Gilmer testified during the proceedings that workers had discovered abnormalities in the gondola cable as early as January of 1976. Gilmer, a witness for the prosecution, told the court there was nothing unusual about the cable breaks. "A break in the track cable was not abnormal. I had observed several of them on Gondola One," Gilmer testified. Attorney John Kobayashi argued ar-gued the case on behalf of Vail Associates. He turned Healy's argument around the questioned whether the upper level management manage-ment should have known what was happening. In his closing argument Kobayashi said that Gilmer never told any officers of the corporation about the breaks in the cable or the subsequent repairs. He claimed there was no alarm over the breaks below |