Police, council in $1.5m lawsuit
A MAN who fell 3.6m through a vent on to concrete after he was arrested is suing police, the council, a shopping centre and a surf club for $1.5 million.
Ross Ian Anderson, 31, claims police used excessive force when they pushed him against an improperly secured screen which gave way, sending him head first into a basement carpark at the Paradise Centre in July 2015.
Police arrested Mr Anderson at Hanlan St after being called to respond to a loud disturbance involving a man and woman – which the statement of claim reveals was his fiancee.
In a statement lodged in the Supreme Court, Mr Anderson’s lawyers said he suffered minor closed head injury with cognitive deficits; post traumatic headaches; cervicothoracic injury including fractures, ligament and facet injuries; left arm problems which may be neck related or shoulder related or directly injured; lower lumbar soft tissue injury or aggravation of pre-existing degenerative condition; and post-traumatic stress disorder and psychiatric injury.
The statement of claim said at the time of the accident he “drank an occasional beer and may have smoked an occasional joint but had ceased his destructive drinking behaviour and had weaned himself completely off ice”.
The claim blames two police officers for not checking whether the screen was safe to push him on to and “using excessive force in placing (Mr Anderson) against the grill”.
It alleges rivets were missing from the grill, which had been inadequately repaired with wire, and that owners of the Paradise Centre and its car park, Fidante Services Partners Ltd, shared responsibility for the accident.
The claim says Surfers Paradise Surf Life Saving Club, which leases its headquarters on top of the carpark, and Gold Coast City Council, which owns the surf club building, are also responsible.
Lawyer Kimberly Allen, from Shine Lawyers, said her client’s case was about public safety.
“Regardless of what led up to this incident, this case is ultimately about a public safety risk and the danger that a fall posed for anyone who lent up against the metal grill,” she said.
Mr Anderson was not charged over the initial incident, but was issued and paid fines for taking liquor away from a licensed premises, consuming liquor in a public place, public nuisance and disorderly behaviour.
At the time police said the accident happened while officers searched Mr Anderson using “standard practice”.
“During this the screen collapsed and the man has fallen three metres to the car park below,” a superintendent told the Bulletin.
“There was no excessive force used, I have viewed CCTV footage from the incident and investigations are ongoing.”
None of the other parties in the civil claim had yesterday lodged a defence.
Mr Anderson’s statement of claim said his injuries meant he was no longer able to work as a boilermaker and that he had no qualifications for sedentary employment, has “poor computer skills” and that his short-term memory would impair his capacity to re-train for employment.