A hospital security guard who turned up to work with a 0.2 per cent blood-alcohol level has lost his bid for more than $450,000 compensation, claiming he was “assaulted” by having to give blood and urine tests. James Pere was working at Gladstone Hospital in central Queensland, when colleagues and nurses noticed his speech was slurred and he smelt of alcohol on August 2, 2012. Another guard took Mr Pere to the hospital’s emergency department, where a nurse took blood and urine samples. She told the District Court in Brisbane that her notes from the night recorded he consented to samples being taken. Tests on the samples which showed a blood-alcohol level of 0.2 per cent and he was told to go home. Mr Pere claimed in court he had never consented to giving the samples, accused medical staff of assaulting him and sought $464,488 in compensation for psychiatric injury and loss of wages. “I find the plaintiff’s credibility so poor that his evidence should not be acted upon where it is in conflict with other credible accounts,” District Court judge Brendan Butler said in his judgment. “With particular reference to the issue of consent, I find the plaintiff’s account that he was penetrated by a needle while he was talking to the doctor and before he realised it was to happen, to be implausible.” In court, Mr Pere also denied being fired from a job as a security guard at a Gladstone hotel for being drunk at work the following year. His boss testified that Mr Pere was found “quite intoxicated” and watching a football game on his phone and had his employment terminated on the spot.
