By LAMECH JOHNSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
ljohnson@tribunemedia.net
A MAN who became a paraplegic as a result of an encounter with police officers in Freeport, Grand Bahama will contest the Court of Appeal’s award of damages to the country’s highest court, London’s Privy Council.
Lawyers for Shawn Scott appeared before Justices Anita Allen, Neville Adderley and Jon Isaacs seeking the court’s leave to appeal its March 2 decision, with respect to the amount awarded.
Lawyer Dawson Malone, assisted by Adrian Gibson, told the judges that the Crown had not filed anything in response to his client’s application.
“I was very surprised by the application,” Justice Allen, the Court of Appeal president, said, adding, “but that’s your right.”
Crown respondent Melissa Wright conceded that it was the applicant’s right to make the application and given that they had complied with the statutory provisions for making the application, offered no objection.
The court, in the circumstances, granted conditional leave to appeal to the Privy Council.
Scott had filed a civil suit against the attorney general and commissioner of police in 2002. In January 2010, Justice Gray Evans ruled liability in favour of Scott for the injuries he received in a police beating. He listed those injuries as paraplegia, a hematoma, laceration to the head, abrasion to an elbow and injury to lower back.
Justice Evans had ordered that his damages as a result of the incident be assessed, which was done at a hearing in September 2013.
Before the hearing, Scott made additional claims to damages, including headaches and loss of bowel and bladder functions.
In 2013, Assistant Registrar Eurika Charlton awarded Scott $886,089 in total damages, which included the $257,000 for pain, suffering, and loss of amenities. However, Charlton then subtracted five per cent of the total award, which she said had represented “disability benefits” previously received by Scott.
Scott contested this amount awarded for general damages on the basis that the allocation was “inordinately low,” arguing that the assistant registrar did not consider his additional claims to be a part of the head injury and paraplegia he suffered as a result of the beating.
He further contended that the assistant registrar should not have deducted the five per cent from his total award.
The appellate court handed down its decision on March 2, which was published online. Justices Allen, Stanley John and Abdulai Conteh, the presiding judges of the appeal, substituted the original awarded sum of $257,000 with $325,000 for general damages.
The court further awarded Scott costs of the legal battle in both the Supreme Court and the appellate court.
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