Maria Goritsas's employers were horrified when she told them her tale of woe - that she had been falsely accused of shoplifting, held against her will and brutally manhandled by a Best & Less shop detective.

But the 63-year-old from Kingsgrove was luckier than most. Her bosses were a group of well-known barristers on the 11th floor of Wentworth Chambers where Mrs Goritsas worked as a cleaner. The leading silk John Maconachie referred her to solicitor Greg Walsh who launched an action for battery, unlawful arrest, false imprisonment as well as aggravated and exemplary damages.

Mrs Goritsas, a large, garrulous woman, told Judge Judith Gibson of the District Court that in 2008 she suffered a serious injury to her right hand after she was dragged from her car in the Roselands shopping centre by a shop detective from Best & Less who, wrongly as it turned out, suspected her of shoplifting.

In the witness box, Mrs Goritsas was so incapacitated she struggled to turn pages with her left hand. Her badly injured right hand, which she nursed carefully, was in a brace.

But then came those dreaded words: ''Surveillance footage.'' Taken in May this year, the day before Mrs Goritsas entered the witness box, the film showed her opening the door of her car with her right hand, bringing in rubbish bins using both hands, as well as driving her car.