The High Court has dismissed a prisoner’s claim against the Minister for Justice and Equality, the Governor of Mountjoy Prison and the Irish Prison Service over injuries he suffered in an assault by another prisoner in the prison kitchen in June 2013.
Mr Justice Conor Dignam, delivering judgment on 18 December 2024, found that Trevor Knowles had been assaulted and suffered injuries, including cuts to his upper lip and the back of his head. He was not satisfied, however, that the defendants were liable. The court’s decision followed a hearing at which Knowles and two prison officials gave evidence.
Knowles argued that prison staff should have anticipated the assault. He said the other prisoner, referred to in the judgment as Mr AB, had recently received a disciplinary caution and was angry about being denied permission to attend a funeral. He also argued that Mr AB should have been removed temporarily from his kitchen assignment, that prison staff should have assessed the risk, and that the kitchen toilet should have been supervised because prisoners smoked there.
The judge found insufficient admissible evidence that Mr AB was visibly agitated before the assault, or that any agitation was caused by the caution or a refusal of leave. The judgment noted that Knowles had no direct conversation with Mr AB that morning and relied on what other prisoners had told him. The judge also found that the disciplinary report described verbal abuse of a prison officer, and that a caution was the lowest available sanction. He concluded that the evidence did not establish that the earlier incident made a later assault reasonably foreseeable or that a temporary removal or risk assessment was required.
The court did not accept several parts of Knowles’s account of what happened immediately after the assault. It found that no alarm was activated and that prison officers did not rush into the toilet, preferring the evidence of the officer who said he found Knowles bleeding and brought him to the landing, where a nurse saw him. The judge also found that the prison toilet was not an authorised smoking area, although prisoners did smoke there at times. In the circumstances, including the kitchen’s record of no previous assaults and the sensitivity of monitoring a toilet, the absence of CCTV or direct supervision was not a breach of duty.
The judgment noted that the P19 report concerning the assault on Knowles was no longer available. The judge said any presumptions arising from its absence had to favour Knowles, but that the gap could not replace admissible evidence or justify speculation about what the report contained. Its absence may have deprived him of evidence that could have supported his account, a matter the judge said should be considered in relation to costs.
The case was dismissed. The judge expressed a preliminary view that there should be no order for costs, given both the defendants’ successful defence and the missing report, and invited the parties to make submissions before costs were determined.