Background
Sam Te Hei was convicted of the 1987 rape and murder of 16-year-old Colleen Burrows, the daughter of Ida Hawkins. After more than 30 years in prison, Te Hei received $17,664 from the Crown in 2020 for New Zealand Bill of Rights Act breaches arising from his prison treatment.
Hawkins brought a claim under the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005, which permits victims to seek access to compensation paid to prisoners but requires a cause of action under the general law. The Victims’ Special Claims Tribunal awarded her $15,000 for emotional harm. The High Court quashed that award. The Court of Appeal agreed that bereavement damages were unavailable under the Deaths by Accidents Compensation Act 1952, but remitted the matter to the Tribunal to consider a possible psychiatric-injury claim for exemplary damages. Hawkins died before the Court of Appeal delivered its judgment, and her estate pursued the appeal.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court dismissed the estate’s appeal and allowed Te Hei’s cross-appeal, setting aside the order sending the claim back to the Tribunal. The Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act is procedural: it does not create substantive rights to damages. A claimant must establish a cause of action for which damages are payable under general law.
The Court declined to alter negligence law to permit secondary victims to recover for emotional harm without a recognisable psychiatric illness or disorder, or to recognise a new wrongful-death tort. There was no evidence that Hawkins had suffered a recognisable psychiatric condition, and she had not witnessed the killing or its immediate aftermath. In any event, her death barred her estate from pursuing exemplary damages under s 3 of the Law Reform Act 1936. The Court upheld Re Chase and held that the earlier Tribunal award had not merged into a final judgment because the proposed remission required a new factual inquiry. It also refused to overturn McCarthy v Palmer and Pou v British American Tobacco (New Zealand) Ltd: damages under the Deaths by Accidents Compensation Act remain confined to pecuniary loss.
Key Takeaways
- The Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act facilitates claims but does not create a free-standing entitlement to damages.
- Secondary-victim psychiatric-harm claims remain subject to the established limits in van Soest.
- An estate cannot recover exemplary damages on a surviving cause of action under the Law Reform Act 1936.
- Wrongful-death damages under the Deaths by Accidents Compensation Act do not include bereavement or mental-injury losses.
Why It Matters
The decision confirms that the special victims’ claims regime cannot be used to expand substantive tort or wrongful-death remedies. The Court treated the claim’s unusual statutory setting, revival decades after the underlying crime, and streamlined Tribunal process as especially poor grounds for broad common-law reform.
Any extension of recovery for bereavement or non-pecuniary loss following wrongful death, the Court said, is for Parliament. The Tribunal’s original $15,000 award remains quashed, with no order as to costs.