A recent decision of the Court regarding a case originally hailing from 1979 has both bad and good news for the citizens of this fair land.
Should I start with the bad news or with the good news?
Let me start from the very beginning as Mary Poppins used to sing.
It all started in 1979 during a New Year’s Eve party. A certain gentleman, definitely behaving in a way not befitting a gentleman, decided to punch a certain lady. The vehemence of the punch was such that it caused her a permanent disability of 24%. This is a very serious impairment. The lady in question claimed damages.
The good news (for the lady, that is) is that she was awarded €226,313.67 in damages. This is not a sum that can in any way be described as paltry.
The bad news is that it took our courts thirty full years to decide. Yes you are reading correctly: THIRTY FULL YEARS. The aggressive act and the resultant disability happened in 1979 while the Court sentence was delivered in July 2009.
Whatever the reason, conditions, situations, excuses etc. such a thing is completely unacceptable. It is nothing short of scandalous. It is shameful that a victim of aggression resulting in a permanent disability to boot has to wait for thirty years to get compensation. This is totally unacceptable. I am purposely not mentioning the name of the judge in question as it could very well be that the culprit is the system and not the judge.
The problem is, though, it is not always the system that is to blame. It could very well be the management style used by a particular magistrate or judge. I remember attending court sittings in the libel cases I instituted against a number of newspapers. A larger number of cases would be listed for the same time, say 9.00a.m. This brought confusion and disorganisation. In one case which dragged on for years we did not spend more than a few hours in active Court sittings.
Whether the system or the judge is the culprit the extreme delay experienced – I refer here to the case of the disabled lady – is unacceptable.
There is more bad news on the way.
Four months before the final judgement was delivered the not so gentle gentleman through a notarial deed donated his immovable property to relatives of his. This meant that lady was just left with a permanent disability as she could not benefit herself from the award made by the Court.
The story seems to have a good ending.
The lady claimed that this action of her aggressor defrauded her of the payments due to her. She then filed another Court case in which she requested the Court to annul the notarial deed. The Court has just ruled that a creditor was legally entitled to attack the validity of any act performed by his or her debtor which was aimed at decreasing the creditor's chances of getting paid.
I hope that this lady will not have to wait another decade or so to get her recompense.