Supreme Court FORMER PRISONER'S CLAIM REJECTED

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31830, 7 November 1968, Page 12

Supreme Court FORMER PRISONER'S CLAIM REJECTED

A jury in the Supreme Court yesterday rejected a claim for damages of , $lO,OOO which Mr Michael Freyne, aged 54, an Army cook (Mr R. J. Allan), had brought against the Attroney-General (Mr G. S. Orr, of Wellington, with him Mr N. W. Williamson) for allege*) injuries suffered during the 1965 Paparua prison riot. Mr Justice Macarthur was on the Bench.

The issues put to the jury and which they answered in the negative were: Were the prison officers negligent through failing to station in the chapel a number of offi-

cers sufficient adequately to supervise or control the prisoners; or were they negligent through failing to guard adequately the switches controlling the chapel lights?

The jury took 31 hours to reach its verdict and added a recommendation that the layout of light switches in prisons should be such that unauthorised persons were denied access to them. Mr Orr, in his final address said that if Mr Freyne had suffered injury it had been very minor. He had recovered in three days. If the jury accepted that the injury, if any.

could have a further effect on Mr Freyne that proposition was at best a possibility. If all that had been done was that a pre-existing injury had been aggravated then how was the jury to sort out what was the result of a 1964 motor accident in which Mr Freyne had broken his neck and what was the result of the incident at Paparua in 1965?

He submitted there had been no evidence of negligence by prison officers and that in fact the prison officers had acted more than reasonably.

They could not have done more in the circumstances, Mr Orr said. Mr Allan said the atmosphere at Paparua prison at the time was one of tension. There was a memory of the Mount Eden prison riot and there was an anxiety caused because of an unusual concentration of men at the church service.

In those circumstances two or even three prison officers would not have been sufficient

The light switches were in the hall where the inmates could get at them and one bank of switches had been almost the full length of the hall away from the two officers standing at the rear. The plaintiff said that somebody should have protected the light switches. Before 1965 there was no evidence of degeneration in Mr Freyne’s neck. The degeneration had resulted from aggravation of the 1964 car accident injury, Mr Allan submitted.

His Honour, at the conclusion of his summing-up, said he felt it his duty to say that if he had to decide the case he would find it difficult to answer either of the issues in the affirmative but it was not bis task to answer the issues but the jury’s.