Career criminal loses 20-year legal bid to win £650k for school injury
A CAREER criminal’s bid to sue a council for £650,000 after claiming he was badly injured in a road accident as a boy is set to be thrown out of court.
Brian Gracie, 58, alleged that teachers at Edinburgh’s Sciennes Primary School did not do enough to prevent him from suffering ‘lifechanging’ head injuries in May 1965.
Mr Gracie, of Muirhouse, Edinburgh, claimed he was struck by a car when he was five, but said his mother did not tell him about the accident until the 1990s.
His legal action was based on an allegation that school staff failed to shut a gate that would have stopped him from running out onto the road.
Mr Gracie, who has spent 22 years of his life in prison for theft and housebreaking convictions, lodged his compensation claim against City of Edinburgh Council at the city’s sheriff court in 1997.
The action was lodged seven years after the end of the period in which Scottish legal rules state compensation claims of this kind can be heard by courts. However, the case was unable to progress because he could not secure legal aid and his lawyers stopped acting for him.
Last June, Mr Gracie’s new legal team returned to the Court of Session and argued that there were extraordinary circumstances which allowed the court to hear the case outside the time allowed.
Judge Lord Tyre heard Mr Gracie only learned about the accident after his mother told him about it in 1994.
The court heard his mother’s testimony was the only source of evidence available on whether the collision actually took place.
Mr Gracie’s lawyers claimed his case should be heard but in a judg- ment issued at the Court of Session yesterday, Lord Tyre refused to allow it to proceed, saying to do so would not be fair on council bosses.
Lord Tyre wrote: ‘It would be impossible for the defender to carry out any realistic investigation of the circumstances of the accident as indeed it probably already was when the action was raised in 1997.
‘Evidence that would have existed at one time has been lost. Establishreleased ing the level of supervision required according to the standards applicable at the time of the accident would be equally problematic.’
Mr Gracie, whose criminal record covers 127 incidents and is five pages long, decided to sue the council after claiming to have learned about the accident from his mother.
The judgment states Mr Gracie was from a prison sentence in 1994 and asked her why he was different from his brother.
Mr Gracie’s mother had told him she and his family had hidden the accident from him and were reluctant to tell him about it.
The court heard that Mr Gracie had been diagnosed with various mental health problems and brain injuries.
Lawyers acting for the City of Edinburgh Council had asked the court to reject the motion made by Mr Gracie’s lawyers.
Lord Tyre then ruled in favour of the local authority. He wrote that he would ‘find it very hard indeed to see how the pursuer could satisfy the court on balance of probabilities that the accident occurred’, or that a gate was left open.
Lord Tyre said that ‘for those reasons the pursuer’s motion is refused’.
A City of Edinburgh Council spokesman said: ‘We are aware of the ruling.’
‘Evidence would have been lost’