THE Privy Council has restored the $2 million judgment sum ordered in 2019 for a teenage boy who was bullied and sexually abused at the St Michael’s Home for Boys and the St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital, before he was placed in the care of the Children’s Authority.
On Monday, the London-based council – TT's highest court – allowed the teenager’s appeal pursued by his mother, in which he challenged the decision by the Appeal Court to reduce the compensation awarded to him by Justice Avason Quinlan-Williams.
On appeal by the State, the amount was reduced to $844,650, completely wiping out the $1 million in vindicatory damages. The damages was the highest sum ever awarded in a local case. Although he is now 19, his name was ordered kept confidential by the courts.
In their decision, Privy Council judges, Lords Hodge, Leggatt, Burrows, Richards and Lady Rose restored Quinlan-Williams award of $921,200 in compensatory damages and $1 million in vindicatory damages.
The total amount is to be paid into the court and put in an interest-bearing account and from it, payments are to be used for the teenager’s expenses for his care, treatment, welfare and accommodation and can only be disbursed on an application to the High Court registrar or a Master.
“There was nothing wrong with the reasoning of the judge on this issue (vindicatory damages) and she has had the benefit of being closer to the facts of this appalling case than the Board,” the judgment said although they admitted $1 million was higher than what they would have awarded.
APPALLING ABUSE
They also found the Appeal Court incorrectly calculated the period for which compensatory damages should have been granted and the amount which should not have been overturned.
“It cannot be said the trial judge overstated the harm suffered by JM (the teen's initials).”
On the award of vindicatory damages, the judgment said the Court of Appeal was wrong in law to hold there needed to be deliberate misconduct or malice by the State.
“In these facts, the institutional inertia resulted in JM suffering appalling physical and sexual abuse and ill-treatment over a five-year period.
"He was a child with a genetic disorder that is not itself a mental illness, who had committed no offences and was detained in inappropriate institutions for young offenders or for adults with mental illnesses.”
They noted that not every infringement of a constitutional right attracted vindicatory damages and it is, “if but only if,'' compensatory damages are inadequate to vindicate that right.
Admitting the $1 million was higher than it would have awarded, the Privy Council said absent a clear flaw in the reasoning, appellate courts should be reluctant to interfere with a trial judge’s assessment.
In 2012, the boy then nine and his sister were removed from the care of their mother after she was arrested for child abandonment and neglect, and put into State care.
Ten days later, a magistrate ordered he be remanded to St Michael’s School for Boys for “safe keeping.”
The judgment
