Bennett v Parker

[2006] QDC 488

DISTRICT COURT OF QUEENSLAND

CITATION:

Bennett v Parker [2006] QDC 488

PARTIES:

DARREN GREGORY BENNETT

Applicant

V

JOHN PARKER THOMSON

Respondent

FILE NO/S:

BD2635/06

DIVISION:

Civil

PROCEEDING:

Application for criminal compensation

ORIGINATING COURT:

District Court, Brisbane

DELIVERED ON:

1 December 2006

DELIVERED AT:

District Court, Brisbane

HEARING DATE:

22 November 2006

JUDGE:

Nase DCJ

ORDER:

That John Parker Thomson pay to Darren Gregory Bennett the sum of $27,600 by way of compensation pursuant to the Criminal Offence Victims Act 1995.

CATCHWORDS:

COUNSEL:

Mr A. Maher for the applicant

SOLICITORS:

Trilby Misso Lawyers for the applicant

1. This is an application for a compensation order by Darren Gregory Bennett (the applicant) pursuant to the Criminal Offence Victims Act 1995 (the Act). The respondent to the application is John Parker Thomson.

1. The respondent has chosen not to appear or to be represented at the hearing of the application.  As a consequence, the hearing proceeded in his absence and solely on the materials placed before the court by the applicant.

1. The respondent was convicted and sentenced in the District Court at Brisbane of doing grievous bodily harm to the applicant.  He entered a plea of guilty on 29 May 2004, although the sentence of four years imprisonment, suspended after 15 months, was not imposed until 3 September 2004.

1. The date of the offence was 9 December 2002.  The applicant had recently separated from his partner (Nicole McLean).  Their relationship had lasted for about four years.  On the day of the offence, after phoning, he arrived to collect some of his property which was still in the house.  When he arrived, the respondent, who lived nearby, was in the kitchen with his Nicole McLean. In a sudden flash of anger, driven by feelings of jealousy, he went up to the respondent and placed him in a headlock.  The applicant is a much larger man than the respondent.  Eventually the respondent, with the help of Nicole McLean, managed to break out of the headlock.  By that time, the respondent also was upset.  During the struggle, the respondent had grabbed a knife in the kitchen.

1. On the facts placed before the court at sentence, the men challenged each other to fight.  The respondent, armed with a knife, said something like “come on, and I’ll kill you”, while the applicant said “drop the knife and fight like a man”.  The respondent went outside, and was in the front footpath area when the applicant broke free of McLean’s restraint and left the house to fight the respondent.  The respondent struck him on his head with a pipe from a vacuum cleaner; then, as the two men engaged, stabbed the knife into his body just above the hip.  The knife wound is the grievous bodily harm on which the charge is based.  The respondent left to telephone for assistance, leaving the knife in the applicant’s body.  When the applicant pulled the knife from his body, he saw his intestines protrude through the wound.

1. On admission to hospital, he was treated…