Jones v Coolwell

[2001] QSC 130

SUPREME COURT OF QUEENSLAND

CITATION:	Jones v Coolwell [2001] QSC 130
PARTIES:	TIMOTHY CHAD JONES (Applicant) v MICHAEL DEAN COOLWELL (Respondent)
FILE NO:	S 1389 of 2001
DIVISION:	Trial
PROCEEDING:	Application for Criminal Compensation
DELIVERED ON:	4 May 2001
DELIVERED AT:	Brisbane
HEARING DATE:	14 March 2001
JUDGE:	Helman J
CATCHWORDS:	CRIMINAL LAW – JUDGMENT AND PUNISHMENT – ORDERS FOR COMPENSATION – grievous bodily harm – severe stab wounding – mental and nervous shock – applicant’s behaviour contributed to injury
COUNSEL:	BF Charrington for applicant No appearance for respondent
SOLICITORS:	Trilby Misso & Co for applicant No appearance for respondent

1. HELMAN J:  This is an application for compensation for injury under the Criminal Offence Victims Act 1995.

1. On 7 September 2000 the respondent, the applicant’s cousin, came before me charged with three offences.  In the first count on the indictment it was alleged that on or about 25 September 1999 at Kingston, Queensland he had attempted unlawfully to kill the applicant.  In the second count, which was an alternative to the first, it was alleged that he, with intent to do some grievous bodily harm to the applicant, did grievous bodily harm to the applicant.  In the third count it was alleged that at the same time and place the respondent unlawfully assaulted a woman called Rachael Beryl Doolan.  The respondent was arraigned on the second and third counts only and pleaded guilty to each.  The Crown accepted his pleas of guilty to those counts in full discharge of the indictment and he was discharged on the first count.  I sentenced the respondent on the second count to imprisonment for six years and recommended that he be eligible for release on parole after having served two years of that term.  On the third count I sentenced him to imprisonment for one month.  This application arises of course from the respondent’s conviction on the second count.

1. The incident which gave rise to the charges occurred in a house in which the applicant was living.  Very early on the day of the incident the applicant, who had been drinking alcohol until about that time, went to the house and knocked on the door of a room in which the respondent was asleep.  The respondent awoke and came to the door.  There followed an altercation in which the applicant demanded the payment of a debt of $50 which the respondent owed him for a small quantity of a dangerous drug.  The applicant assaulted the respondent - according to the applicant with only light pushes but according to the respondent and another witness with punches - and following that the respondent stabbed the applicant with a knife a number of times.  The applicant was taken to the emergency department of the Logan Hospital.  He was able to walk and was alert and orientated.  He had three chest wall wounds (of two centimetres, three centimetres, and five centimetres), a seven centimetre wound to the left flank-lower abdomen from which the small bowel protruded, and a four centimetre wound to the left flank approximately three centimetres above the last-mentioned wound.  The applicant was admitted to the intensive care unit and later transferred to the surgical ward.  He recovered well and was discharged home on 28 September 1999.

1. The applicant, who was born on 19 June 1972, is single and unemployed.  The stab wounds have left him with a neuroma of the superficial nerves of the left side of the abdomen and left side of the chest.  According to Dr Geoffrey Boyce, neurologist, who examined the applicant on 15 November 2000, the infiltration of local anaesthetic and cortisone, and physiotherapy, could be used to treat the neuroma.  There is no indication in the evidence as to whether the applicant’s symptoms reported on 15 November 2000, recurrent abdominal pain and a dull ache in the left chest region, are likely to be permanent. 

1. The results of an interview conducted on 10 November 2000 by Mr Peter Stoker, psychologist, show that the applicant is of normal verbal intelligence and dull performance intelligence.  As a result of the incident he had suffered daily flashbacks to it, depression, regular nightmares, insomnia, and suicidal ideation.  He had suffered an impairment of concentration in his short-term memory and had become fearful, distrustful, angry, introverted, and less confident than before.  He suffers from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder of severe symptomatology with psychotic features, and paranoid personality disorder.  He will require forty to fifty sessions of psychological therapy over two years at a cost of $158 per session.  He suffered suicidal ideation before the incident, but it has become worse since.  If therapy is successful he will have a permanent partial psychological disability in the order of seventeen to nineteen per cent;  otherwise he will have a twenty to thirty per cent. permanent partial psychological disability.  

1. The applicant, who was abused as a child, was stabbed in the neck by his mother when he was nineteen years old.  He was in a coma for a month as a result of blood loss.  The stabbing by the respondent revived his memories of the earlier stabbing.  Since the respondent stabbed him he has been in hospital for psychiatric treatment three times:  on each of the first two occasions for one week and for two months on the third. 

1. In the circumstances I assess the applicant’s entitlement to compensation, before any adjustment pursuant to s. 25(7), at $37,500:  twenty-five per cent. of the scheme maximum of $75,000 for the stab wounding which was severe, and another twenty-five per cent. for the mental and nervous shock, which was also severe.

1. I shall deduct fifteen per cent. from the $37,500 for the applicant’s behaviour in assaulting the respondent before he was stabbed. That behaviour directly contributed to his injury.  Whichever version is the truth as to the applicant’s attack on the respondent in my view the respondent’s reaction was so grossly disproportionate as to call for only a small adjustment.  The weight of evidence as it was recounted to me by the Crown prosecutor, however, supports the account of the applicant’s having punched the respondent and I have acted upon that version in assessing the extent of the deduction which should be made.  Accordingly the applicant will have $31,875 by way of compensation for the injuries suffered by him as a result of the commission of the offence.