Harracksingh v Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | Sir Andrew Leggatt |
| Judgment Date | 15 January 2004 |
| Neutral Citation | [2004] UKPC 3 |
| Court | Privy Council |
| Docket Number | Appeal No. 28 of 2002 |
| Date | 15 January 2004 |
[2004] UKPC 3
Present at the hearing:-
Lord Hoffmann
Lord Hope of Craighead
Lord Scott of Foscote
Sir Andrew Leggatt
Sir Kenneth Keith
Privy Council
[Delivered by Sir Andrew Leggatt]
The appellant, Mitra Harracksingh, was plaintiff in the action out of which this appeal arises. The appellant sued the respondents, the Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago and P.C. Neville Adams, for false imprisonment, assault and battery and malicious prosecution. The trial judge, Mr Justice Mendes, gave judgment for the appellant on all three grounds in the sum of $88,050 plus interest. Against the judgment of the Court of Appeal, reversing that decision, the appellant now appeals to their Lordships' Board.
On 28th June 1991 the appellant was living in a rented room in a building in Back Street, Tunapuna when an altercation occurred between him and a woman who lived in another rented room on the same floor of the building. She called the police, alleging that he had damaged a vase. In consequence, at 11 p.m. three police officers in plain clothes arrived at the building in a police van. The only record of the evidence given at trial was the judge's notes. According to them the appellant said that he heard a knock at the door from a person who identified himself as a police officer. The appellant said, "Wait five minutes", but within that time there was a big bang, the hasp and staple were broken, and the door came off its hinges. The appellant described how two officers in plain clothes entered, and, when he asked them if they needed a warrant, they told him to put on his pants. He said he was dragged bare-footed down two flights of stairs and his head was banged against the back door of the police van. This made it bleed, and his cervical disc was damaged. According to the appellant P.C. Adams drove the van very fast and slammed on the brakes, with the result that his head hit the back of the seat in front and the officer with him in the back slammed his feet into the appellant's testicles. On arrival at the police station P.C. Adams said, "Throw the mudder cunt in the cell. He can't get bail until Monday morning." Some time later he was, however, released on bail, following the intervention of Corporal Sammy, whom he knew.
P.C. Adams gave evidence that he was the driver of the police van. He stopped outside the appellant's home, sounded the horn and called his name. The answer was, "Give me ten minutes". The officer replied that he did not have so much time. He and P.C. Lezama then went upstairs with a woman who had emerged from the building. In response to their knock, the appellant opened the door. He was quarrelsome, very angry, and smelt of drink. The appellant and the officers then went downstairs. It was P.C. Adams's evidence that, as the officers were about to leave in the van, the appellant said, "Is that all yuh come and focking harassing me for, it have focking bandit pushing coke and all you not arresting them". He was immediately arrested for "making use of obscene language" to the annoyance of persons in the street, taken in the van to the police station and charged. P.C. Lezama's evidence was substantially the same, but he did add that when the appellant said that the dispute with his neighbour had been settled, P.C. Adams warned him to desist from such behaviour in future. Sergeant Sammy (as by the time of trial he had become) claimed to remember nothing of the events in question, except that the appellant was charged. P.C. Adams agreed in cross-examination that at the Magistrates' Court he had said that when the appellant came out of the house the officer identified himself to him. Apart from this, all the witnesses adhered in cross-examination to their evidence-in-chief. The third arresting officer was not called.
The appellant said that when released from the police station he went to the casualty department at the Port of Spain General Hospital for a while and saw a doctor there before being sent to a ward for observation. He said his most severe injury was the damage to his cervical disc. There were lacerations to his fingers, toes and head, and his testicles were "swollen for quite some time and pretty painful". He added that "there was blood all over" and he thought he had lost a tooth. The acting medical records officer from the hospital produced such records as he had, but they did not include the casualty card. The record timed at 2.50 a.m. on 29th June 1991 showed the principal injury as whiplash injury, while that timed at 10.10 a.m. later that morning stated "pain in neck" and referred to "hit about body and neck", "now pain behind neck", and "pain about rest of body". It reiterated "whiplash injury", for which a temporary cervical collar and pain killers were prescribed. The appellant said that he had to wear a cervical collar for some time and that he went to the outpatients department twice a week until August 1991. The records show that he was then discharged. On the ground that Dr Sandra B. Kennedy was not proved not to be available as a witness, the judge refused to admit in evidence her report dated 19th January 1992. He acknowledged that it "dealt with the treatment of the Plaintiff in the Accident and Emergency Department on June 28 th 1991 and contains a detailed listing of all the injuries which the doctor observed." On 15 th July 1991 at Tunapuna Magistrates Court the charge against the appellant was dismissed.
Reviewing the evidence, the judge observed that P.C. Lezama recalled the events "in remarkably similar detail as the evidence given by P.C. Adams and added very little". He regarded Sergeant Sammy's evidence as "entirely unhelpful" and formed "the impression that his memory was selective". The judge was left "in a state of unease concerning what he may in fact have observed and remembered about the Plaintiff's condition … but preferred to avoid having to testify about it". The judge said he "found the evidence given on behalf of the Defendants to be inherently unreliable". About it the judge made five numbered comments. First, although the officers were responding to a complaint of malicious damage, no explanation was given why the appellant was not arrested and prosecuted for it. But this was a mistake because the judge was disregarding the evidence of P.C. Lezama, that because the dispute with the neighbour had been settled, the appellant was warned by P.C. Adams about his future conduct. Secondly, the judge found it odd that the appellant, having been confronted by the officers at the door of his apartment, should follow the officers...
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