A court has overturned an $800,000 compensation award to a woman injured during a 2017 protest in Sydney, finding that the police officer's actions didn't cause her injuries.
Laura Cullen was among 5000 people at a 2017 protest in Sydney when she got knocked down and injured as NSW police tried to arrest a man. The police owe people attending protests has been overturned on appeal, stripping an Invasion Day marcher of an $800,000 compensation claim and forcing them to repay $103,000 in legal costs.
Shortly before Christmas, overturning an earlier ruling that found police had a duty of care to a woman who attended a protest where she was a bystander to an arrest, and who got knocked down and was injured during the arrest. According to the judgment, at one point in the march, the rally stopped on Buckland Street in Alexandria where a speaker attempted to set fire to an Australian flag with lighter fluid. A police officer filming the effort to extinguish the fire was struck by a protester, causing the camera she was holding to fall to the ground. Another officer, SLC Damian Livermore, attempted to arrest the protester by moving through the crowd. During the arrest, Cullen – who was not involved in these incidents – was knocked to the ground and injured, the judgment said. She experienced retrograde amnesia, which meant she had no memory of attending the rally. That the officer had “acted recklessly or unreasonably” when carrying out the arrest as they “ignored the strong potential of harm to persons close by”. Cullen was awarded $800,000 in damages, plus legal costs. The decision was considered significant for clarifying the responsibility police officers had to people attending protests. But on appeal, the court found in a two-one decision that Cullen had not established that the actions of the officer had caused her injury. Justices Fabian Gleeson and Jeremy Kirk held that “it was the distinct, significant criminal action” of another protest that led to the arrest “and it was the difficulty of effecting that lawful arrest which led to the responding being injured”
PROTESTS POLICE INJURY COMPENSATION COURT
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