Legal costs win for former prisoner

A former prison inmate who won his case to overturn the way prison release dates had been calculated for over a decade has been awarded more than $13,000 in legal costs.

The Court of Appeal’s award to Michael Marino comes as he awaits a court hearing to decide how much compensation he should receive for being kept in prison 127 days too long on a sentence for family violence offences.

Corrections is fighting that too, and on Thursday it filed an appeal against a High Court decision that it was liable to pay any compensation.

In the first round of the case, dealing with calculating the proper release date, Marino had lost in the Court of Appeal.

But then the Supreme Court heard the case and decided in Marino’s favour.

The Supreme Court’s decision overturned an understanding of the law that had stood for 13 years.

The court’s ruling potentially opened the door to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of former prisoners to claim compensation.

The Court of Appeal issued a judgment yesterday awarding Marino $13,380 legal costs against the Department of Corrections for the hearing at that level of the court system in April 2016.

It used the standard scale to calculate how much Corrections should pay, rejecting arguments to either increase or reduce it.

Corrections had wanted the award limited to the amount – not made public – that Marino had actually paid his lawyers, but the Court of Appeal said that would exploit his lawyers’, Douglas Ewen and Graeme Edgeler, willingness to undertake work for free or at discounted rates.

The outcome of the case potentially changed the calculation for people who had charges laid on different dates and were remanded in custody before being sentenced to jail. – Fairfax NZ