A New Zealand court has found the owner of White Island/Whakaari, the offshore volcano that erupted in 2019, killing 22 people, guilty on one charge of breaching workplace safety laws.

On Tuesday, Auckland district court ruled Whakaari Management Limited (WML), the holding company of landowners Andrew, James and Peter Buttle, had not met its obligations to visitors to the volcano.

The 2019 disaster killed 22 people – including 17 Australians – and left 25 others injured while triggering a debate over the safety of New Zealand’s natural hazard and adventure tourism industry.

In his judgment on Tuesday, judge Evangelos Thomas criticised “astonishing failures” of safety audits given the “obvious risks”, saying WML needed to take expert advice.

The disaster put a spotlight on the limits of New Zealand’s no-fault compensation system, which automatically pays for some expenses of accident victims such as medical care, grants for funerals and loss of income.

He expects to reach settlement deals before the end of the year for his remaining clients, such as Australian Jesse Langford who was badly burned and lost his sister and parents in the tragedy.

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