Sex offender Reekie allowed to appeal for costs

Nicholas Reekie. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Notorious sex offender Nicholas Reekie has won the right to appeal a court decision that failed to award him full costs after it found his human rights had been breached.

Reekie was awarded $1000 in costs by Justice Edwin Wylie last October after he sued the Corrections Department, the Attorney-General and Waitakere District Court for humiliation and unlawful detention while in Auckland's Paremoremo Prison in 2001 and 2002, to the sum of $1 million.

The Supreme Court has today released a decision allowing Reekie to appeal Justice Wylie's decision not to award him full costs relating to his court case.

In August last year Justice Wylie ruled that Reekie's rights were breached when he was strip-searched by prison staff but also ruled that Reekie would not get any compensation for the ill-treatment.

Reekie filed an application seeking costs worth $5762, made up of lawyer costs, travel costs and phone bills.

Justice Wylie said the general principle was that the unsuccessful party should pay costs, but it was at the court's discretion.

"In accordance with settled principle, I am not persuaded that it is appropriate to make a general costs order in favour of Mr Reekie,'' he said.

But he said it was appropriate allow Reekie a contribution towards counsel fees incurred by him for the preparation and filing of his original statement of claim.

Reekie was awarded $1000 in costs, to be paid to him by the Department of Corrections.

Reekie was sentenced to preventive detention in 2003 with a minimum non-parole period of 25 years - later reduced to 20 years - after being convicted on 31 charges, including abduction and rape, for offences against four female victims, aged between 11 and 69.

David Dougherty was earlier wrongly jailed for the 1992 abduction and rape of the 11-year-old girl.

He was cleared by DNA evidence.