Slain police informer’s son wants compo for booze injuries
THE son of a slain police informer wants taxpayers to compensate him for the ill-effects of his excessive drinking — including a liver transplant — which he claims were triggered by his parents’ execution.
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THE son of slain police informer Terence Hodson wants taxpayers to compensate him for the ill-effects of his excessive drinking — including a liver transplant — which he claims were triggered by his parents’ execution.
Andrew Hodson alleges his parents’ deaths were caused by the negligence of Victoria Police, and led to him becoming an alcoholic.
Hodson and his sisters discovered the bodies of his father and mother, Christine Hodson, in their home in May 2004.
DIRTY COP DAVID MIECHEL PLEADS FOR RELEASE
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CHILDREN OF SLAIN INFORMER SUE POLICE
Gangland killer Carl Williams later told police he arranged for hitman Rodney Collins to kill Terence, who was due to give evidence against allegedly corrupt former detective Paul Dale in a high-profile drug case.
Mr Dale and Collins were both charged with the murders but the case collapsed when Williams was bashed to death in jail in April 2010.
In Supreme Court papers filed last week, Hodson — who has served jail time for drug offences and armed robbery — claims his liver damage and subsequent transplant caused him physical and psychiatric injuries.
His injuries were found to meet the threshold for compensation in December 2015, and the state referred his claim to a medical panel.
In May this year the panel issued its opinion that Hodson’s drinking problems were not sparked by his parents’ deaths. He is now fighting to quash that decision, claiming the panel’s determination was a denial of natural justice as it relied on a record of his medical history that was wrong. Hodson claims the panel failed to give him opportunity to comment on claims within it.
He further alleges the panel relied on a single reference to “drink” in sentencing remarks by Judge Elizabeth Curtain in 1997, again without giving him opportunity to comment, in circumstances where the remark did not accurately describe his usual alcohol consumption at that time.
Hodson alleges the panel wrongly concluded he was “an unreliable historian” and challenged several claims in its finding, including that he had a “tendency to minimise any other contributions” to his psychiatric condition, but failed to identify what those other contributions were.
Hodson says the panel did not assess his impairment from liver damage and subsequent transplant as being caused in part by his alcohol use disorder, which is one of his claimed psychiatric injuries.
Hodson seeks that the panel’s findings be quashed and that he be reassessed by a new medical panel. He declined to comment on his legal action and referred queries to his lawyer.
peter.mickelburough@news.com.au
