Man loses R1m damages award
2003-09-22 20:13
Bloemfontein - The Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein divested a Western Cape man on Monday of a damages compensation award of R1.04m.
The Cape High Court earlier ordered the Minister of Safety and Security and the national police commissioner to pay this amount to John Geldenhuys.
Appeal judge Fritz Brand dismissed the former car salesman's claim on Monday, finding the police officers involved did not act unreasonably or negligently.
Geldenhuys was found to have suffered serious brain damage after being kept overnight in a police cell in Gordon's Bay. He was arrested shortly before midnight on December 26 1998, following an alleged drunken street fight.
He spent 13 hours in the single cell before an ambulance was called the next day and he was rushed to hospital for surgery to relieve brain bleeding.
By that time he had a swollen bump on the forehead and a black eye. Afterwards he could not recall how he had been injured. Due to the brain damage he was unable to testify.
Lawyers for Geldenhuys argued that the officers should have called earlier for medical help when noticing that their client failed to wake up.
Sleeping off drunken stupor
The police maintained they were under the impression he was merely sleeping off his drunken stupor. They did not notice that he had been injured.
Brand confirmed the high court's earlier finding that evidence was insufficient to prove that police officers assaulted Geldenhuys on the fateful night in his cell.
Based on the medical testimony it could not be found that he sustained the brain injuries after his arrest, Brand ruled.
Expert medical witnesses for both sides agreed that the exterior signs of Geldenhuys' injuries - the black eye and the bump on the head - manifested only later.
The judge also ruled that there was no factual causal connection between Geldenhuys' loss of income and the police's failure to call for medical help earlier.
The two expert witnesses testified that his primary brain injuries were permanent immediately after the original impact.
"No later surgery would have made any difference to that," Brand said.
Appeal judges Louis Harms and Tom Cloete and acting appeal judges BR Southwood and D Mlambo concurred with his judgment.
- SAPA