The Court of Ap­peal has over­turned a judge's de­ci­sion to dis­miss a neg­li­gence claim by a young man who was se­ri­ous­ly in­jured af­ter the po­lice ve­hi­cle that was tak­ing him home crashed 12 years ago.

The Ap­peal Court Judges Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er, Vasheist Kokaram and Mal­colm Holdip set aside the or­der of the High Court judge and re­mit­ted the is­sue of dam­ages to the High Court to be as­sessed by a Mas­ter.

In 2016, Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo dis­missed Vi­jay Man­raj's claim and or­dered him to pay costs af­ter she found that the po­lice­man was not au­tho­rized to give Man­raj a lift in the po­lice ve­hi­cle. Man­raj and the of­fi­cer were friends.

In his writ­ten sub­mis­sions to the Ap­peal Court, Man­raj's at­tor­ney, Im­ran Khan, ar­gued that the judge was wrong to have found that the ac­tion of the of­fi­cer was unau­tho­rised with­out any ev­i­dence be­ing put for­ward by the State in this re­gard. Fur­ther sub­mit­ting that the of­fi­cer did not act con­trary to his du­ties un­der the Po­lice Ser­vice Act, Khan con­tend­ed that the of­fi­cer was pro­vid­ing a lift to Man­raj in his ca­pac­i­ty as a po­lice of­fi­cer, dressed in his uni­form and he was re­spond­ing to a per­son in dis­tress, some­one who was strand­ed in the night and not sim­ply as a friend.

He said whether he knew Man­raj was im­ma­te­r­i­al. Khan sub­mit­ted, "This case rais­es im­por­tant pub­lic pol­i­cy con­sid­er­a­tions since we are left with a very young man at the time of the sub­ject ac­ci­dent be­ing se­vere­ly in­jured and left with a life­long de­bil­i­tat­ing in­jury prac­ti­cal­ly amount­ing to the loss of all func­tion­al­i­ty in his arm, through no fault of his own. Should the State be al­lowed to es­cape li­a­bil­i­ty for the Ap­pel­lant’s loss­es mere­ly by al­leg­ing that the po­lice con­sta­ble had no per­mis­sion to use the po­lice ve­hi­cle for the pur­pose for which it was used with­out any­thing more?"

Be­ing an un­sus­pect­ing and in­no­cent mem­ber of the pub­lic, with no in­ti­mate knowl­edge of the in­ner work­ings, rules or reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the po­lice ser­vice, he said it would be a trav­es­ty of jus­tice for his client to bear such a cat­a­stroph­ic loss as a young man with­out any re­course.

The At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the State sub­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that the of­fi­cer was at the time not a ser­vant of the state as he was on a frol­ic of his own and he took the po­lice ve­hi­cle with­out per­mis­sion to give Man­raj a lift home.

Man­raj was 18 years old at the time and had gone to a wake on March 27, 2011. He made arrange­ments with his friend to drop him home, but they had a dis­agree­ment and he end­ed up be­ing strand­ed. He called the of­fi­cer on his cell­phone and asked him for a lift home.

When they got to the four road in­ter­sec­tion near Pic­ton, Debe, the of­fi­cer lost con­trol of the ve­hi­cle, which flipped and crashed in­to a con­crete em­bank­ment. Man­raj suf­fered 70 per­cent per­ma­nent par­tial dis­abil­i­ty to his left arm.