Ghanaian ex-soldier who sued British Defense Ministry for £1.6 million is ordered by UK court to repay £70,000 for lying about his health.
A British Court has ordered British Ghanaian ex-soldier, Lance Corporal Michael Mantey to pay back an amount of £70,000 after he was caught by investigators on film walking without aid equipment
After suffering a foot injury while serving in Estonia, the former soldier sued the UK Ministry of Defense for a whopping £1.6 million.
The Daily Mail reports that Mantey, who joined the British Army in 2009, claimed to have lost some mobility as a result of the injury and needed to dress in multiple layers to visit his doctor.
Later, after being discreetly filmed by Ministry of Defense investigators while wearing open-toed shoes and walking without a stick, he abandoned the lawsuit.
Investigators found that the soldier had actually healed from trench foot but had lied about the incident in order to receive compensation from the government.
He is currently being sued for fraudulent statements by his former employers, and the cost of his legal defense has reached £70,000.
His claim was deemed to be “fundamentally dishonest” by a British High Court presided over by Judge Mr. Justice Eyre.
In his ruling, he stated that “the MoD says there was deliberate malingering while Mr. Mantey says his examination presentation was genuine with the greater activity shown in the surveillance footage being atypical.”
He made the decision to report symptoms that he was aware were untrue and from which he was not afflicted. He claimed that he did so in the context of a significant damages suit.
“The only explanation is that he did it intentionally to make the claim more compelling. Such actions were dishonest.
“I conclude that Mr. Mantey had a small NCFI, from which he had fully recovered at some point before September 2021, on the basis of the balance of probability.
For financial advantage, he dishonestly represented himself as having sustained a more severe injury that had a lasting and crippling effect.
The claim as a whole was contaminated by its dishonesty. It altered the core of the claim, had a huge impact on how the case was presented as a whole, and significantly increased the claim’s value.
“To put it briefly, there was dishonesty as to a key aspect of the case, namely the scope and ongoing consequences of Mr. Mantey’s injuries,” the court wrote.
But Mr. Mantey, 39, claimed in his witness statement that although his mobility had been compromised, it has now improved as a result of his treatment.
This story could be changed if only someone could see what I go through on a daily basis, he added.
“This is only a day’s worth of footage.” I was told that I would always have these wounds.
“Pain comes when you’re not ready for it,” the saying goes. It arrives when it chooses to.
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