Dad left with massive legal bill after being dragged away from dying daughter

Daily Record

3 days ago

A five-day trial took place and now Dr Rashid Abbasi has to cover the cost.
A dad is facing a huge legal bill after being dragged away from his dying daughter's hospital bedside. Dr Rashid Abbasi had brought a case against the police for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment.
He also claimed Northumbria Police officers were guilty of assault and battery against him, but his legal bid was thrown out and slammed as dishonest by a judge.
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He launched the civil claims and a five-day trial took place at Newcastle Crown Court. Now he has to pay for the proceedings and around 60 to 70 per cent of the force's legal costs.
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The bill is estimated at anywhere from £50,000 up to £100,000. Disturbing video images showed him shouting 'b*******' and biting officers who restrained and dragged him from intensive care in August 2019.
He now faces paying not only his own legal costs but the costs of Northumbria Police following a case which took six years to come to court. He had attempted to recover some costs under a one way cost shifting regime.
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But it is understood that police have opposed that move and it is set to be rejected by the judge. It was a bid to offset some of the 'costs liability' which will run into tens of thousands of pounds.
Police footage showed Dr Abbasi, 64, sparking the violence in the paediatric unit of the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, said Recorder James Murphy in his judgement.
He condemned his 'quite appalling' allegations that an officer had told him that he would never see daughter Zainab again as untrue and said that he doubted even Dr Abbasi had ever believed it.
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In his damning judgement, he said: "I would be very surprised that a member of the public let alone a police officer would not have decided there was likely to be a breach of the peace.
"The attitude of Dr Abbasi at the time described by the nurses and also the security guards paint a much more accurate picture of the menace present on the ward used by Dr Abbasi.
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"It is perfectly clear to me looking at his demeanour and attitude. If I was a bystander having watched this footage, a reasonable description would have been that Dr Abbasi was a coiled spring."
He and his wife, Aliya, 57, also a doctor, were told that medics wanted to remove Zainab, six, from a ventilator keeping her alive. The little girl suffered from a life-limiting neurodegenerative condition called Niemann-Pick Disease.
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It was a 'truly shocking' incident, the judge said. She died four weeks after it. Speaking after the case earlier this month, Dr Abbasi said: "My daughter Zainab was the light of my life."
The Mirror reports he added: "She was a critically ill young girl. She needed both her parents by her bedside. Any father would have been desperate to stay.
"I am disappointed that the arrest was held to be lawful and the description of me by the Judge as a menace was unwarranted and hurtful and is not borne out by the video footage which tells its own story."
His solicitor, Daniel Cooper, Partner at Imran Khan and Partners, said he would be advising on the merits of an appeal "in due course." Both Northumbria Police and Dr Abassi's legal team declined to comment on the legal bill.