CLINTON Bernard, the lithographic printer who was shot and crippled by a rogue cop 12 years ago says he is going to sue attorney and leader of the United People’s Party (UPP), Antonnette Haughton-Cardenas, for deducting legal fees from the $2.5-million ex-gratia payment the government made to him six weeks ago.

“I don’t see why she has gone into the money,” Bernard told the Observer in a telephone interview from the United Kingdom on Wednesday. “That money was a humanitarian gesture from the government. The agreement we had was a contingency agreement for the lawyers (three of them) to share 30 per cent of any award the court made. But there is no court award. We lost the case when we went to the court of appeal in Jamaica. That is why we are pursuing it here at the Privy Council.”

However, Haughton-Cardenas told the Observer yesterday that she had simply taken what was due to her for the work she had done for Bernard.

“It’s really very simple. I had no contingency agreement with him. I did the work… argued the case in the lower court and the court of appeal, paid junior lawyers to work with me in the case. If he is saying that I am not entitled to cover my cost for the work I did, then he needs to take that contention to court and I’ll abide by whatever the court says,” she said.

Bernard, 35, was left with a life-long susceptibility to epileptic seizures on February 11, 1990 after one Special Constable Paul Morgan shot him in the head for refusing to yield the use of a public telephone.

The uncontroverted facts of Bernard’s case, according to court documents, are that on that day he accompanied his mother to the Central Sorting Office in Kingston to the use the public telephone.

They took their place in a line of about 15 people and when it was Bernard’s turn to use the phone, Morgan came on the scene demanding to use it before him.

Bernard refused and told Morgan that he should join the line and wait like everyone else. However, Morgan, who is quoted in documents as saying “Bway me naw join no line, give me the phone,” shoved and shot Bernard in the head and then made a report resulting in Bernard being arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer.

The charges were subsequently dropped and Bernard filed a suit seeking compensation.

The whereabouts of Morgan, who was fired the following month for absenting himself from the job for more than 48 hours, are unknown to the police, who theorise that he is no longer in the island.

The suit was first heard by Supreme Court judge Zaila McCalla, who awarded Bernard $2.2 million in June 2000. However, her award was overturned last November by the local court of appeal where Bernard had taken the case for an increase in the award.

While sympathising with Bernard, the appellate court judges, Clarence Walker, Seymour Panton and Donald Bingham, ruled that the law of vicarious liability made it impossible for them to increase Justice McCalla’s award. In fact, the judges’ interpretation of the law obliged them to reverse Justice McCalla’s award and turn Bernard away empty-handed.

However, the judges took the opportunity to send a message to the government to make an ex-gratia payment to Bernard as well as amend the law to ensure that citizens like Bernard get justice.

Said Justice Bingham: “Such a cry can only be answered by the state instituting some measure of reform aimed at assisting the innocent victims of the barbarous conduct of some agents of the state.”

Yesterday, Solicitor-General Michael Hylton, whose office had sent the government cheque to Haughton-Cardenas on Bernard’s behalf, told the Observer that when he became aware of the contention, he checked with the bank, presumably with a view to intervening — “giving all parties a chance to be heard” was how he put it. However, the cheque had already been encashed.

“Normal procedure is to make such cheques out to the lawyer unless we are advised not to,” Hylton said. “If that had been done, we may have been able to do something.”

Haughton-Cardenas said that she had sent the balance of the money on to the lawyers who had contacted her to take Bernard’s case. However, Bernard, who has three children in Jamaica between the ages of six and seven and a 17 year-old in England, said he had no intention of taking the balance of the money which, according to him, now amounted to $1.7 million.

“I don’t want it. I want to speak to the prime minister to see if he can get her to return the cheque or I’ll go to court. Whatever happens, I want my money,” he said.

Meantime, Haughton-Cardenas has washed her hand of Bernard. “I am no longer connected with the case because of his behaviour,” she said yesterday. “His claims are immoral. If he wins one hundred thousand pounds in England I don’t want any of it. I don’t like being taken for a ride. I did the work… paid the expenses out of my own pocket and this is what the young man is saying, but no good deed goes unpunished.”