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A Canberra man has waited more than nine years for a court to find he was falsely imprisoned. But in a decision handed down last week, Steven James Lewis will receive just $1 in damages after the judge also found his detention was inevitable. It was January 5, 2009, when Mr Lewis was arrested at Capital Car Detailing in Fyshwick, his workplace at the time. Six or seven police officers arrived and Mr Lewis - who had failed on several occasions to turn up to weekend detention - suspected why they were there, and hid under a bed. But police coaxed Mr Lewis out, put him in handcuffs and marched him from the shop in front of his colleagues. It was, by Mr Lewis' own account, a shameful and humiliating experience. Following his arrest, Mr Lewis was taken to the Belconnen Remand Centre where he was strip-searched, dressed in prison garb and placed in a cell that he said smelt like faeces. But last week, nine years later, and after a court had already found in 2015 that the decisions behind Mr Lewis' arrest were invalid, Justice Richard Refshauge ruled in a 63-page judgement that Mr Lewis was falsely imprisoned. Mr Lewis had sued the government in the ACT Supreme Court seeking damages, in part arguing the court should take into account his humiliation during the arrest and his experience in custody in awarding damages. He also claimed compensation under the ACT's human rights laws. The problems for Mr Lewis, now 37, had started two years before his arrest, when he got into a fight outside a tavern in Fyshwick and smashed a glass into the face of another man. He admitted the assault and was sentenced to a 12 month jail term for the single charge, to be served by way of weekend detention. For the first few months, Mr Lewis dutifully turned himself in each Friday evening to spend two nights in custody. But one day, he moved to Griffith to help his father, who had emphysema and was about to half a lung removed, on his father's farm. He neglected to tell corrective services. Mr Lewis returned to his mother's home in Canberra eight weeks later, where he found a pile of letters he suspected contained "bad news". He binned the letters without reading them. Meanwhile, the board met without Mr Lewis or his lawyer present, cancelled his periodic detention order and issued a warrant for his arrest. On January 5, 2009, acting on the board's warrant, police arrested Mr Lewis at his work in Fyshwick. A court had already found the decision to cancel the periodic detention order invalid, saying the board denied Mr Lewis natural justice, since he was not at the meeting to put his case. But while Justice Refshauge found that Mr Lewis was falsely imprisoned, and said he would have ordered the government pay him $100,000 in damages had his detention not in the end been inevitable, the government was instead ordered to pay Mr Lewis just nominal damages of $1. He found Mr Lewis was entitled only to nominal damages because the board's decision to cancel his periodic detention order and have him detained was inevitable. The judge also dismissed Mr Lewis' claim for compensation under the ACT's human rights laws. Both parties were to pay their own costs.

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