$2-million lawsuit
Attorney General files statement of defence in connection with lawsuit over death of Veronica Park.
The Attorney General of Canada says the health and mental health care Veronica Park received during her stay at the Nova Institution for Women in Truro was competent, and reasonable and met recognized provincial standards.
That statement is contained in an 11-page statement of defence filed by the Crown entity with the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia in Truro on Sept. 21.
Park died in hospital in Nova Scotia on April 24, 2015 while serving a three-year sentence at the correctional facility for robbing an 82-year-old woman in 2014. The Corner Brook woman was 38.
Her family is suing the Attorney General for more than $2 million. In a statement of a fact filed in April the family claims the defendant failed to provide essential health care to Ms. Park and aggravated her mental health condition.
The family states that her death was preventable and the defendant’s negligence caused her death by failing to provide timely health-care intervention. And they claim she was falsely imprisoned at times by being confined in segregation.
While the attorney general agrees with some of the specifics of the case in terms of Park’s detention, her conduct while at Nova and visits to the prison’s health centre, it challenges the family to provide “strict proof” of other allegations.
For example the family claims her cause of death is bronchopneumonia. But the Crown says it has no knowledge of post mortem disclosure that Park’s cause of death was acute necrotizing bronchopneumonia.
The Crown also claims “that any injuries or loss, which are not admitted but specifically denied, are a result of Veronica Park’s own negligence.” It says she was suspected of being involved in the institutional pill-trade and was hospitalized in August 2015 after having an adverse reaction to ingesting medication that was not prescribed to her.
Park had been placed in segregation on numerous occasions and spent some time classified as a maximum-security offender.
The case will be heard in Truro.