IT WOULD be churlish not to congratulate 18 year old Alice Smith on her great good fortune. Last week she was, one imagines, a perfectly average teenager. This week she is richer by £17,500, courtesy of Xtra Vision, the company which owns the store from which this young lady was accused of stealing a video.
Alice was 15 when she was stopped by an Xtra Vision security guard in the company of friends. He alleged that a video she had in her possession had triggered an alarm in the shop; she said the video was a present from a friend and that her group had gone into the shop to check on other videos.
She - and her friends - returned to the shop where, a court was told, the video this time failed to activate the security alarm.
She sued Xtra Vision on the grounds that the words spoken to her by the guard - "You've taken the video from the shop without payment. When you left the premises the security system blipped" - implied she was a shoplifter and guilty of dishonourable conduct.
Distressed and alarmed
She testified before the court that she was afraid, distressed and alarmed when taken back into the shop. Afterwards she had developed an anxiety complex and had to receive medical treatment. She could not concentrate on her studies and developed a fear of entering shops. She thought she might be labelled a thief.
The Irish Times report stated that Mr Justice Spain said that while there had been a conflict of evidence on some issues, he accepted Alice Smith's account. He said the shop's security man could have dealt with the matter with a great deal more discretion, and awarded her the above mentioned sum.
No doubt Mr Justice Spain was absolutely right in his judgment about who was right and who was wrong. Good man, judge. And no doubt poor Alice Smith was humiliated and embarrassed by what happened to her who would not be?
But £17,500? Is that not a rather large amount of money for a teenager for a few minutes' discomfiture? Myself, I could put up with a great deal more mortification for that.
As I say, the judge was absolutely right in his astoundingly right, clever and prudent judgment. The issue here, as always, is the law. Can anyone really think that it is right that a teenage girl could be awarded so much money for so relatively little cause?
Should there not be a lawful - scale for such things? And if there should be clear legal guidelines on how to allocate - damages in such cases, might there not also be guidelines on - how security guards are to do - something about the plague of shoplifting in Dublin without incurring the likelihood of a lawsuit if things go a little wrong?
For what lawful technique of apprehension is there? If a security system is triggered, is a security guard expected to broadcast a loudspeaker request for anyone on Grafton Street who might possibly be suspected of having unlawfully purloined certain items, to please present themselves voluntarily to such and such a store, where goods on their person will be checked against receipts in their possession?
A nagging suspicion
You know, this might take you by surprise, but I have a shrewd, though nagging suspicion this is a poor way to apprehend the genuine shoplifters - to which category, I hasten to add, young Alice Smith clearly did not belong.
Which is just as well, because those few minutes "in custody" netted her in real terms more than a full year's overtime for the most hardworking prison officer in the land. This unnamed prison officer, the public accounts committee was told, earned £29,600 in overtime in 1994. After tax, PRSI and other deductions, this servant of the State earned £14.208.
To earn that money, he or she and I'm inclined to think it's a he probably worked a 26 hour day for all eight days in a 53 week year, minding some of the fine people whom Irish society had been producing in such large numbers in recent times.
No doubt he - and I know I - would prefer to be wrongfully stopped in Grafton Street, brought back to a shop and then released, all within a few minutes. An easier way of making a living.
Certainly easier than minding prisoners. The copy of the newspaper which reported the above two stories also told us of Noel Brennan, who had bitten a hospital security guard and had then declared he was HIV positive, taunting his victim that he too would be infected. The security guard had to wait for three weeks of considerable apprehension before it was discovered the fine Mr Brennan was just engaging in a merry jape.
The felonious sense of humour is a wondrous thing. The bad news for the prison warders of Ireland is that Mr Brennan, who has 13 previous convictions, many of them for violence, was sentenced to one year's custody in the care of the State: the good news for them is that six months of the sentence are suspended.
No doubt many of us will not look on that news with the equanimity we should. Still, we might take consolation from the thought that it costs £42,000 a year to keep a prisoner.
Saving every penny
If Alice wanted to, she could keep a prisoner in the clink for five months with her proceeds from Xtra Vision. This way we are saving the taxpayer £21,000. We need to save every penny we can to pay for the compensation claims which shuffle through the court.
No doubt the £250 paid by Dublin Corporation to Denise Kearney for the cut on her bottom when her mother put her on the broken toilet in their Corporation home will not break the bank, but these things add up. There are lot of corporation homes in Ireland, and a lot of bottoms. Little wonder the judge observed: "Unfortunately, there is such an appetite for litigation that every scratch produces a law suit".
No doubt my good friend Noel Carroll, the extraordinarily conscientious and city loving public relations officer for Dublin Corporation, who is leaving to take a big job with the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, will not weep too much as he bids farewell to the bottoms and loo seats of our land. They can mount to a tidy sum.
Happy days, Noel.