Supreme Court increases Shortt awards to €4.7m

A 14-year nightmare for wrongly jailed Co Donegal nightclub owner Frank Shortt has ended with a €4.7 million damages award from the Supreme Court, including an unprecedented €1 million punitive damages award, to mark the court's abhorrence of "outrageous conduct" by gardaí towards him.

The five-judge court increased from €1.9 million to €4.7 million the award of damages made to Mr Shortt by the High Court arising from his wrongful conviction and imprisonment on trumped-up charges that he allowed the sale of drugs at his former nightclub in Inishowen.

The award includes €1 million punitive damages to reflect the court's disapproval of what Chief Justice Mr Justice John Murray described as an affair which was "a stain of the darkest dye on the otherwise generally fine tradition of the Garda" and the "especially grave" abuse of Mr Shortt by two gardaí - Supt Kevin Lennon and Det Garda Noel McMahon. The damages were awarded against the State.

This case involved "the undermining of the due process of law and inveigling, with perjured evidence, a jury of citizens, faithfully doing their duty, to convict an innocent man", the Chief Justice said. Punitive or exemplary damages were not compensatory but were intended as a warning that such a serious abuse of power by the State would not be tolerated. They were to remind other State organs there was "not only a duty to compensate a wronged citizen" but "to take all steps necessary to ensure, as far as practicable, that such deliberate abuse of power is not repeated but is prevented".

Such awards represented "a moral sanction" and "a mirror to the proper indignation of the public" and there were compelling reasons in this "exceptional, egregious" case for awarding substantial exemplary damages.

The facts and circumstances in this case were "a pot of iniquity" which, while they should not be seen as reflecting on the force as a whole, could not be dismissed as "a couple of bad apples".

The lack of immediacy or action in response to the evidence which emerged relating to Mr Shortt's trial raised questions about whether there was "some complacency" at different levels in the Garda about the exacting standards of integrity which must at all times be observed.

"The cavalier manner in which those two members set about trying to cover up their misdeeds, not entirely out of sight of other Garda members, displayed a worrying confidence on their part that they could get away with it."

The Chief Justice was giving the court's unanimous decision allowing Mr Shortt's appeal aimed at increasing a €1.93 million award made to him by the High Court in 2005 in compensation for his wrongful conviction and jailing.

Mr Shortt was not in court but his son Jalisco and daughter Zabrina welcomed the judgment "unreservedly" and said it, and particularly the €1 million award in exemplary damages, represented "a total vindication" of their father.

In his action against the Garda Commissioner and State, Mr Shortt argued that €500,000 in general damages and €50,000 in punitive damages awarded by the High Court did not reflect adequately the "living hell" he had endured.

He served 27 months in prison after being convicted in 1995 on charges of allowing the sale of drugs at his nightclub, the Point Inn, in Inishowen. In July 2000, the Court of Criminal Appeal declared he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice on grounds of newly discovered facts - the deliberate suppression of material by Det Garda McMahon and Supt Lennon.

The Chief Justice, with whom Ms Justice Susan Denham, Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman, Mr Justice Hugh Geoghegan and Mr Justice Nial Fennelly agreed, yesterday said the court would increase the award of general damages to €2.25 million and the amount of exemplary damages to €1 million.

The amounts for special damages relating to loss of profits at the Point Inn - €550,000 - and for the loss of the nightclub (which was destroyed by fire) and a caravan park which Mr Shortt had owned - €806,221 - were left unchanged. The award also includes €12,650 for legal fees.

Mr Shortt, Mr Justice Murray said, had been the victim of "disreputable conduct and a shocking abuse of power" on the part of Supt Lennon and Det Garda McMahon who had conspired to concoct false evidence against him, resulting in perjured Garda evidence being given at his trial and his conviction. For Mr Shortt it was "a tormenting saga of imprisonment, mental and physical deterioration, estrangement from family, loss of business, public and professional ignominy and despair". He was "sacrificed in order to assist the career ambitions of a number of members of the Garda".

The Chief Justice said unfortunately the gravest deviations from normal standards of conduct sometimes occurred in police forces which, if left unchecked, could infect elements of such forces. The conduct of Supt Lennon and Det McMahon probably constituted the "gravest dereliction of duty and abuse of power that one could ever fearfully contemplate would be engaged in by servants of the State and officers of law and order".