Jury right to reject woman’s claim: court
She should have accepted David Pickton’s $50,000 offer, judge says
VANCOUVER — A jury was right to reject a woman’s claim that her life was ruined after a sexual assault by the brother of serial killer Robert Pickton, says a judge who awarded her no costs at trial.
In 1991, David Pickton was convicted and fined $1,000 for the assault inside a trailer at a construction site in Burnaby.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice George Macintosh ruled the woman should have accepted Pickton’s $50,000 settlement offer before the civil trial, which ended in June.
The woman sued Pickton for about $1 million in 2013.
In June, the court awarded the woman $45,000 in part for finding that Pickton had inflicted lasting psychological trauma.
Her lawyer, Jason Gratl, subsequently asked a judge to award the woman an additional $50,000 to $60,000 in costs by arguing that Pickton's statements attacked her character.
Pickton's lawyer, Andrew Morrison, contended the woman should not get any more money and that his client should be awarded costs instead.
Macintosh said the woman, now 55, did not appear to be dishonest during her testimony, but that her memory and credibility were ravaged by her exceptionally difficult life.
“Frankly, on any rational assessment, her dealings with Mr. Pickton in 1991 were only a small event by comparison with the miseries she faced in many other aspects of her life,” he said.
“She therefore, at trial, had an insurmountable task of proving causation for her claim, and the jury rightly, in my view, largely rejected her claim.”
The woman alleged Pickton cornered her at their workplace and felt her genitals through her jeans before threatening rape.
She testified that a co-worker later warned her to leave town or she would be “cut into pieces.”
The trial heard she had also been raped by a stranger at age 17 and was physically and sexually abused by her then-husband two years later.
Pickton denied sexually assaulting the woman, until the first day of the trial.
He testified he believed she was trespassing and slapped her on the buttocks with an open hand.
The Canadian Press does not name victims of sexual assault.
Jurors awarded the woman $45,000 — including $20,000 in punitive damages, — but that did not include any money for future loss of earnings.
In his ruling, Macintosh said the woman will be awarded costs only incurred up until Pickton made the settlement offer, about six weeks before trial.
The judge also awarded half the costs of an accountant who testified about the woman’s loss of income since the assault.
The amounts have yet to be determined.
Pickton must pay the woman’s legal costs for the most recent court action, as well as his own, the judge said in also not awarding any costs to Pickton.
The woman is “obviously disappointed” with the outcome, said Gratl, outside court.
Pickton’s lawyer said his client is pleased with the outcome.
“She should have accepted the reasonable offer to settle that Mr. Pickton made, so everyone could have avoided the trial and the judicial resources it consumed,” Morrison said.