Allegations young boy sexually abused at Essington School headed for Supreme Court trial

In making the application on Thursday, the parents’ lawyer said the case would otherwise be ‘statute-barred’, which ‘would really have the effect of bringing their claim to an end’.

Parents of a five-year-old former Essington student are suing the school, claiming their son was physically and sexually abused by other boys.

A lawsuit claiming a five-year-old boy was sexually abused by other students at Darwin’s elite Essington School is still headed for trial despite an embarrassing blunder by the plaintiffs’ lawyer.

The boy’s parents, who the NT News has chosen not to name, are suing the school in the Supreme Court claiming they suffered “nervous shock” from their son’s abuse which a senior staff member then tried to cover up “to protect the school”.

On Thursday, their legal team applied for an extension of time to file documents after failing to confirm whether the school’s lawyers had accepted service by deadline.

The parents lawyer, Jessica Clark, told the court the statutory limitation period for the claim had lapsed since her colleague made the error on the “mistaken belief” confirmation was a mere “formality”.

“The claim would be statute-barred if your honour wasn’t to grant the extension and that would be a matter of substantial prejudice for the plaintiffs, it would really have the effect of bringing their claim to an end,” she said.

“The extension is for a very short period of time, it’s one day.

“It would be my submission that it would be near impossible to find that any prejudice flows to the defendant by the delay in this case.”

In reply, the school’s lawyer, James Sleight, said the plaintiff had not produced any evidence “to show that it has an arguable cause of action” and should be required “to show that this extension is not a futility”.

“There’s a deemed presumptive prejudice, the longer it takes to get matters to trial, the longer there is for people’s memories to fade,” he said.

“We wouldn’t be here if the solicitor for the plaintiff had driven the 10.4km from his office on the 24th of August this year and left the originating process at the registered office of the defendant.”

But in granting the extension, Associate Justice Vince Luppino said he didn’t believe there was “any real prejudice” to the school.

“I don’t think the plaintiffs should be penalised for the default of their solicitor in not complying with the order, notwithstanding that — and I’ll put it on the record — it should have been complied with and (he) should be highly embarrassed for not having complied with it,” he said.

“There is still a good possibility of getting a trial date in this matter in the next civil blocks, which would have been the same civil blocks that the matter would have been referred to, I think, had service been effected in time.”