Man caught in crossfire fails in bid for compo
A man injured after becoming caught in crossfire during a fatal shootout on Auckland’s northwestern motorway has failed in a bid for $1.4 million compensation.
Richard Neville sued the attorney-general after he unwittingly became involved in a shootout between police and escaping man Stephen McDonald, who was high on drugs and had been stealing cars at gunpoint in 2009.
McDonald had been shooting at chasing police for an hour when he jumped onto the back of Neville’s truck on the motorway.
According to court documents, officers opened fire at McDonald and bullets smashed Neville’s windscreen. Bullet and glass fragments wounded his face, torso and neck, and shattered his eardrum.
The shootout also fatally struck courier driver and new father Halatau Naitoko, 17. In 2013 police paid a total of $225,000 in compensation to his family.
Last month Neville announced he would sue because he had been in pain for the past six years.
He said he was suffering numb- ness, insomnia, nightmares and mental trauma.
In a High Court judgment issued yesterday, Justice Geoffrey Venning struck out the compensation bid, saying there was no ‘‘reasonably arguable cause of action’’.
Neville argued that the actions of the police shooter – known as Officer 84 – amounted to gross negligence and that he had the right not to be subject to disproportionately severe treatment by police, which he said was breached when the officer fired the bullet.
However, Justice Venning said police action could not be categorised as treating Neville as ‘‘less than human’’, or conduct which was so out of proportion to the particular circumstances so as to cause ‘‘shock and revulsion’’ or such as to ‘‘shock the national conscience’’.
‘‘The police identified Mr McDonald as presenting a risk to life and the public in general and in that sense the actions of shooting at him can be seen as proportionate. The consequences were inadvertent and unintended.’’
He also made note that Neville had six years to seek claims for personal injury.