Garda sergeant can pursue compensation over knee injuries, judge rules

A High Court judge has directed the Minister for Justice to reconsider a refusal to allow a Garda sergeant to pursue a compensation claim over knee injuries suffered after a prisoner went out of control.

There was no dispute that Sgt Shane Devlin, since retired, had suffered significant personal injuries but the central issue in the context of a compensation claim was whether the injuries were “maliciously inflicted”, Mr Justice Max Barrett said.

Sgt Devlin sought judicial review after an officer in the policing division of the Department of Justice recommended in July 2016 that compensation be refused arising from the relevant incident of July 19th 2013.

On that date, Sgt Devlin, formerly stationed at Cavan garda station, was performing prisoner escort duties at Virginia District Court.

During the court sitting, a prisoner created a disturbance and had to be removed to another room by Sgt Devlin and another Garda. In that room, the prisoner engaged in “quite disturbing” behaviour, hitting himself in the face with his fists and hitting his head off a table, the judge noted.

Both gardaí tried to calm him. In a subsequent letter concerning the incident, Sgt Devlin said, while trying to calm the prisoner, the prisoner’s weight shifted and landed on the side of the sergeant’s right knee.

Sgt Devlin wrote he did not believe that was a malicious act by the prisoner and, although he had felt pain in his knee, continued to calm the prisoner.

He later suffered knee pain.

In his judgment on Monday, Mr Justice Barret said the legal test in not whether there was malice but whether or not there is a “stateable case of malice”. It “flies in the face of fundamental reason and common sense” to conclude there is not even a stateable case that the prisoner had engaged in “deliberate or reckless” action that constituted a physical attack, or at least a treat of physical attack, on Sgt Devlin, he said.

If there is a stateable case, the Minister is not concerned whether or not there was malice as the law provides that is an issue for the High Court, he held.

Whether or not Sgt Devlin’s letter may “cause a difficulty” for him at a compensation hearing was a matter to be decided at the compensation hearing itself, he added.

The judge ruled the sergeant is entitled to an order quashing the refusal of July 2016 to authorise a compensation claim and directed the matter be returned to the Minister for fresh consideration in line with the court’s judgment.