The High Court has quashed the Minister for Justice and Equality’s refusal to authorise retired garda sergeant Shane Devlin to apply to the court for compensation for injuries he sustained on duty. It remitted his application to the Minister for fresh consideration under the correct legal test.
Mr Justice Max Barrett’s judgment, delivered on 1 October 2018, concerned injuries Devlin suffered while escorting prisoners at Virginia District Court on 19 July 2013. A prisoner, Mr O’Doherty, began striking himself and hitting his head against a table. Devlin and another garda intervened to restrain him. Devlin’s knee was injured during the episode. The judgment said the injury and the events leading to it were not disputed.
Devlin’s solicitors applied for compensation under the Garda Síochána (Compensation) Acts 1941 and 1945. For a non-fatal injury to qualify, the relevant provision requires that it was “maliciously inflicted” while the garda was on duty.
The Department refused the application in July 2016. Its decision relied on Devlin’s 2013 note to his station superintendent, in which he wrote that he did not believe the prisoner’s act was malicious. Department officials concluded there was no deliberate act to harm him. The High Court noted that their reasoning did not address whether the prisoner had acted recklessly.
The court said the governing question at this stage was whether the application disclosed a stateable case that the injury was maliciously inflicted. It was for the Minister to refuse an application only if the injuries were quite clearly not maliciously inflicted. If a stateable case existed, whether malice had in fact been proved was for the High Court to decide in a compensation proceeding.
Justice Barrett held that the Minister had not applied that test. He also found that concluding there was no stateable case of a deliberate or reckless physical attack or threat flew in the face of fundamental reason and common sense. The court did not decide whether the prisoner acted deliberately, whether the injury was ultimately maliciously inflicted, or whether Devlin was entitled to compensation.
The court granted certiorari, quashing the Minister’s decision, and remitted the application for fresh consideration. The judgment said any difficulty arising from Devlin’s 2013 note would be for a future compensation hearing to determine.