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Legal services: Hannibal Lecter Case at HMP Cardiffv) No documents could be found by the Defendant relating to the prior cell mate on cell mate murder in 1992 when Inmate McLeod murdered Inmate Smith. The Defendant's witnesses deny any recollection on the event. However, the Defendant's witness to the Mubarek Inquiry did recall it; b) The Defendant's Investigation into the incident went ahead without the above documentation and without any investigation into why it had all gone missing. The investigation also went ahead without any involvement of any of the Claimants. Further, the investigation failed to identify anyone who admitted to having made any of the key decisions in this matter: i.e.(i) who placed Inmate Ricketts on Rule 45 (ii) who placed him in a shared cell (iii) who returned him to his cell after he attended Health Care claiming that he heard voices; c) Despite the above, the Investigation absolved all the unidentifi ed people and concluded that all had acted correctly; d) When off sick, most of the Claimants received letters informing them that they would be put on half pay if they did not return to work. The Defendant now accepts that this should not have occurred. As the incident was work related, they were entitled to full pay until they were fi t to return. Three returned to work prematurely as a result when unfi t to do so; e) The Defendant's conduct prolonged the litigation when its own expert recognised that the continuing litigation caused all the Claimants to suffer worse symptoms; The Litigation The Defendant admitted liability in full (subject to proof of causation of injury and loss) on the eve of a 5 day Trial of liability on 24.1.2005. The Home Office was judicially criticised on a number of occasions for failing to deal with the litigation as promptly as they should have done. No offers of settlement were made to any of the Staff involved until Friday 10.3.2006 - the Case was listed for a 3 day Hearing commencing on 15.3.2006 for a Judge to determine compensation. The final offers put forward were received after 6pm on 14.3.2006. The Home Office insisted that the terms of settlement should be confi dential. No reason for this was given and although such a stance is not uncommon in Employment Tribunal Cases it is something I personally have never come across in dealing with Personal Injury litigation. LLW & The POA Working Together This was the biggest PI Case we have ever undertaken for the POA. For the Liability Trial we prepared over 20,000 pages of evidence which, by March 2006 had grown to over 40,000 pages. From July 2002 we conducted the Litigation on a No Win No Fee basis. That meant that if the Claims had been lost we would have been paid nothing. This was a risk we took because right from the outset when I spent several days at Cardiff investigating this Case, I have always wanted to pursue it and believed that it would ultimately secure justice for the Staff involved. If unsuccessful the overall cost to LLW and the POA may well have run into six fi gures, but sometimes principles must be pursued and obviously we are pleased that this situation has not arisen. I would like to thank-
I know that the Staff involved are far from fully recovered and no amount of money can ever compensate them for what they have gone through. I can only hope that what we were able to achieve for them helped in some small way. I also hope that there will one day be a Public Inquiry into this case and the issue of how mentally disordered Offenders are managed within the Prison Service.
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