A woman who was wrongfully imprisoned by the New South Wales government has won a further damages case, opening the way for her to receive more than $4m from the state for her malicious prosecution.
Roseanne Beckett was jailed in 1991 for allegedly soliciting the murder of her former husband, Barry Catt.
She was released from prison in 2001 and had her conviction quashed in 2005 following a series of inquiries that raised serious concerns she had been framed.
In August, Beckett won a landmark case in the NSW supreme court for malicious prosecution. Justice Ian Harrison awarded her $2.3m in damages, but reserved a decision on costs and interest.
In a further decision handed down on Tuesday, Harrison found Beckett should be granted an additional $1,781,367 in interest, bringing the total amount of damages to $4,091,717. He also said the state should pay Beckett’s costs.
The NSW government argued – “somewhat boldly” in justice Harrison’s view – that Beckett should not be allowed interest on the amount awarded to her.
The government argued Beckett should not be entitled to interest on her costs, in part because the figure reached by Harrison in August was not calculated with “arithmetical correctness” and because Beckett continued with certain causes of action during the trial that were not likely to succeed.
The government offered a collection of colourful remarks and non sequiturs in support of its submission.
It said the total figure was “evaluative, intuitive or the product of a complex and difficult-to-articulate reasoning process involving considerations that are objective, subjective, temporal and to some extent metaphysical”.
Harrison described the submissions as “curiously strident”, and said the case was an example of “hard-fought litigation”. He found in favour of Beckett on the question of interest and ruled she should be entitled to $4.3m in total.
“The state’s argument that Ms Beckett’s damages for unlawful detention are excessive because they have been awarded in 2015, and are apparently undiscounted to account for the rate at which damages would have been awarded in 2005, is meaningless, as it could be levelled against any and every award of damages no matter how large or small,” he said.
Harrison also ordered the state to pay Beckett’s costs. In his reasons he noted the state had “total disregard” for a settlement put forward by Beckett. He said: “I never once acquired the feeling that the state was even in the slightest fashion interested in settling the proceedings upon any basis other than a complete victory for it.
“The alacrity with which the state sought a stay of the proceedings pending an appeal, even before my reasons for judgment had been delivered into its hands, let alone read, to some considerable extent reinforces my perception that the state was obdurately uninterested in any non-litigated outcome apart from capitulation.”
A small number of issues surrounding the admissibility of certain evidence are still to be considered, and Harrison said he would provide rulings on the concerns raised.
