Payout deal to make Alvarez a millionaire: [1 All-round Country Edition]
Stapleton, John. Weekend Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 19 Nov 2005: 3.
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Abstract
Ms [VIVIAN Alvarez], who came to Australia in 1984 with husband Robert Young and became an Australian citizen in 1986, was found in a dishevelled state in the northern NSW town of Lismore in March 2001. She was taken to a psychiatric unit before being mistakenly deported. In May this year she was found living in a hospice in The Phillipines.
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VIVIAN Alvarez will be a multi-millionaire at the end of her wrongful deportation compensation case, a lawyer said yesterday.
Ms Alvarez flew into Sydney yesterday morning after being wrongfully deported to The Phillipines in 2001 but she said nothing at the airport or at a subsequent press conference.
Instead her high-profile lawyer, former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld, did the talking.
“A lot,” Mr Einfeld said when asked how much the compensation claim was likely to be. “It is very substantial.”
“In the millions?” he was asked. “Yes,” he replied.
Mr Einfeld said his client had been in constant pain for four years, had suffered brain damage and an “appalling series of traumas”, could barely walk, spent most of her time in a wheelchair and would need specialist orthopaedic, psychiatric, neurological and physical care.
“You can’t give back someone four years of her life, you can’t compensate for lack of freedom”, Mr Einfeld said.
Ms Alvarez, who came to Australia in 1984 with husband Robert Young and became an Australian citizen in 1986, was found in a dishevelled state in thenorthern NSW town of Lismore in March 2001. She was taken to a psychiatric unit before being mistakenly deported. In May this year she was found living in a hospice in The Phillipines.
Mr Einfeld said she had little recollection of her two children, a 17-year-old boy who lives with his father and another boy who is in foster care in Queensland.
ORIGINAL:
John Stapleton
VIVIAN Alvarez was on a single mother’s pension when she was found wandering the streets of Lismore in a dishevelled state. She was picked up and taken to the psychiatric unit of Lismore hospital in 2001.
She is soon, courtesy of the taxpayer and as a result of her mistreatment, to become a multi-millionaire.
Legal fees are also likely to run into the millions – from the lawyers and barristers representing her to their colleagues, the lawyers, barristers and legal assistants from the Department of Immigration.
Legal fees are also likely to run into the millions – from the lawyers and barristers representing her to their colleagues, the lawyers, barristers and legal assistants from the Department of Immigration.
An Australian citizen since 1986, Alvarez was subsequently wrongly deported back to her country of origin the Phillipines and became a cause celebre for critics of the already scandal ridden Immigration Department.
Recognised by a priest in a hospice for the dying in May, 2005, her lawyers, led by the magisterial former Federal Court justice Marcus Einfeld, refused to bring Alvarez back to Australia until the arbitration process was agreed on, ensuring that her case, with the ready assistance of the media, remained a thorn in the side of the Howard government until it was resolved.
That her legal advisers refused to bring Alvarez back to Australia, and instead were happy to have her housed at an Australian Commission flat in Manila, may at first seem paradoxical but was integral to the success of her legal teams strategy.
As a result of adroit moves by her solicitors, Alvarez is likely to become a multi-millionaire as a result of a hefty compensation payout.
In a win win situation for everyone but the Australian taxpayer, the lawyers themselves are likely to be very well compensed for their part in the drama.
How that deal was done is a story in itself; and shows some extremely clever legal maneouvering and a profound, if cynical, understanding of how the Australian court system operates.
The arbitration process to determine compensation, to be held in private and presided over by former High Court chief justice Sir Anthony Mason, will be conducted in secret, or “private” as the lawyers prefer to put it.
Parties to the proceedings have all signed confidentiality agreements.
In other words, a process to cost the Australian tax payers millions of dollars will not be open even to the normal journalistic scrutiny of a court case.
In other words, a process to cost the Australian tax payers millions of dollars will not be open even to the normal journalistic scrutiny of a court case.
But for every day that passes in this process her legal team, including Einfeld, a “team” of barristers and her high profile lawyer George Newhouse, will all be paid their standard fees, which can easily run into thousands of dollars a day.
Her team can expect to fully recover the monies they spent travelling to the Phillipines and making contact with Alvarez and her family.
As Einfeld pointed out at the one and only press conference held since her return – a press conference where his client did not speak a single word – Alvarez would have had almost no chance of obtaining proper compensation if she had returned earlier and been left to struggle through the court system.
For by the time she had mounted a compensation claim through the civil courts, and the case had bounced around the higher courts on appeal, many years could have passed before Alvarez saw a single cent. Meanwhile, already in a wheelchair and allegedly suffering considerable pain, she would have had no means of properly caring for herself, much less mounting a complex legal claim.
Instead of leaving her case to the vagaries of the Australian legal system Einfeld and his team were determined that she would have a Rolls Royce ride through to the compensation dollar.
This ride, as Einfeld was happy to declare, has been made very much easier by the government and especially the Prime Minister’s apology and admission of liability.
Folded into this is compensation for an alleged car accident, which arguably led to various injuries and a serious deterioration Ms Alvarez’s condition and which was untreated due to her mistreatment and deportation.
Beyond her alleged injuries, there is little proof of the car accident. There was no police report filed, no one came forward to say they had run into a pedestrian and were concerned about her condition, and Ms Alvarez is unable to describe what sort of vehicle may or may not have hit her.
That Ms Alvarez was expriencing problems prior to the alleged accident is evidenced by the fact that the previous month she had failed to collect her son from a Brisbane day-care centre. That child is now in foster care. Another boy, 17, lives with his father.
With so little evidence, it is lucky for Vivian and for her lawyers that the issue of compensation for her car accident has been folded, by agreement, into the compensation claim for wrongful deportation.