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Calculating the Cost of Misjudgment
Daily Telegraph
May 16, 2002
The job of deciding what compensation should be paid in misjudgment cases falls on the shoulders on one man: Lord Brennan, QC the Home Secretary's independent assessor of compensation for miscarriages of justice. Sometimes, there will be surviving family members who were financially dependent on the person who died. They might claim what is called "pecuniary" compensation - a sum based on the convicted person's loss of earnings, together with legal costs and expenses. The other type of compensation covers damage to the person's character or reputation. This "non-pecuniary" compensation is awarded only to the living victim of a miscarriage of justice, never to relatives. Non-pecuniary loss is more difficult to assess. Lord Brennan says: "It is difficult to consider such cases in a simplistic 'tariff' way. They all depend on their own facts, and the effects of imprisonment on the individual applicant."
Lawrence Kormornick, from the law firm Dechert, has lodged substantial claims on behalf of two senior directors of Matrix Churchill, the machine-tool manufacturer caught up in the arms-to-Iraq affair. They were wrongly arrested in October 1990 and not cleared until two years later. For Reginald Dunk and Alexander Schlesinger, two defence dealers who were wrongly convicted after the same investigation, Kormornick has already won a record £4 million, including costs. Their business was virtually ruined because of adverse publicity surrounding their arrest, prosecution, and conviction.
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