Mr Binns’s case was conducted by Carolynn Gallwey, solicitor at Bhatt Murphy, with Garden Court’s Stephen Simblet KC instructed for the trial of the claim.
Stephen Simblet KC successfully represented a man in a claim against the Metropolitan Police, with damages including for race discrimination and awards of aggravated and exemplary damages.
Mr Binns obtained judgment on his claims for false imprisonment, assault, breach of human rights and race discrimination.
In Duane Binns v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, after a 8-day-trial before HHJ Saunders sitting with a jury, the jury returned verdicts in the claimant’s favour on all matters.
The jury found that the police had stopped the car, in which both the driver and the passenger, Mr Binns, were Black men, for racially discriminatory reasons.
Having stopped the car, each of the men were searched under the Misuse of Drugs Act by the Metropolitan Police. The jury determined that there were no grounds for police carrying out the search of Mr Binns, nor for placing him in handcuffs, nor for arresting him when, during the search, the police found the cash that he was carrying in order to purchase a car.
The jury found that Mr Binns had been further unlawfully detained at the police station, in consequence of the arresting officer giving untruthful information about the circumstances, and that a strip-search and a search of his home had been unlawful.
The jury also found that in addition to those being unlawful, that Mr Binns had proven that all of these matters were due to unlawful race discrimination and awarded significant compensation for all of them. The jury made awards bigger than the brackets suggested by the judge on several of them, and awards of aggravated and exemplary damages at the maximum suggested by the judge.
The police were also ordered to pay all of the costs of the claim, including the trial costs being on the indemnity basis.
