Angus Rigg, who was found hanging in a NSW police cell in July, 1991, is suing the NSW police for damages for negligence in the Victorian Supreme Court.
Mr Rigg, now aged 20, is in a vegetative state with severe brain damage in Melbourne Albert Hospital. His mother, Carolyn, is also suing for pain and suffering.
The Rigg case sparked great controversy over a dispute between the then Minister for Police, Ted Pickering, and his police commissioner Tony Lauer, over the extent to which Mr Lauer had informed Mr Pickering about the case.
The Riggs’ legal advisers hope the case will begin next week. Earlier attempts by the NSW police to have the case moved to NSW were unsuccessful.
The Riggs will assert that the police had a duty of care to those in its custody to take steps to prevent their injury (presumably irrespective of whether the injury was self-inflicted or inflicted by someone else). They will assert that that duty had been breached in this case and that as a result Mr Rigg suffered pain and economic loss and that his mother suffered pain.
The case is being defended by the NSW police and legal sources say there is little or no prospect of a settlement. The case could result in a raft of other cases.
The deputy director of the Institute of Criminology and consultant to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, David Biles, said yesterday that the case would help define what was the duty of care owed by custodians to those in custody. For that reason he welcomed the case.
In the 1980s there were more than 500 deaths in custody, 105 of them Aboriginal. Of these, about a third were suicides, nearly all hanging. The rest were homicide, accident, natural causes and “”other”.
He thought it likely that there would be more civil cases for damages from families of people who had died in custody or from those injured.
There was a need for more clarity about the responsibility of custodians (police or prison officers). Clarity would be better for custodians, prisoners and relatives as to what was acceptable and what was not.
There was an argument that there should be constant visual or video surveillance, but it was very expensive. The royal commission had laid down guidelines calling for more frequent inspections the in early hours of detention, and as a result procedures had improved.
A case-by-case approach was expensive, time-consuming and stressful but unavoidable as a way of working out the duties of custodians. It was important for a civilised, democratic society to provide care to its citizens, even those in custody.