Peter Mahon (lawyer)

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For other persons named Peter Mahon, see Peter Mahon (disambiguation).

Justice Peter Thomas Mahon (1923-1986) was a New Zealand Queen's Counsel, best known for his Commission of Inquiry into the Mt. Erebus Disaster.

Mahon was junior counsel for the prosecution in the Parker-Hulme murder case in 1954.

After the crash of Air New Zealand Flight 901 with loss of all aboard on 28 November 1979, an accident report was released by the chief inspector of air accidents, Ron Chippindale, which cited pilot error as the chief cause of the accident. Public demand led to the formation of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the accident, consisting solely of Mahon. He produced his report on 27 April 1981, which cleared the crew of blame for the disaster and found that the major cause was the reprogramming of the aircraft's navigation computer without the crew being notified. Mahon controversially claimed that Air New Zealand executives engaged in a conspiracy to whitewash the inquiry, covering up evidence and lying to investigators, famously accusing them of "an orchestrated litany of lies". His report, Verdict on Erebus, won the New Zealand Book Awards prize for non fiction in 1985.

In 1983 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council upheld Mahon's findings as to the cause of the accident - reprogramming of the aircraft's flight plan by the ground crew who then failed to inform the crew. But the Board held that Mahon had acted in excess of his jurisdiction and in breach of natural justice by going on to make findings of a conspiracy by Air New Zealand to cover up the errors of the ground staff.