Four Aboriginal men who were unlawfully tear-gassed as children inside the Northern Territory's Don Dale Youth Detention Centre have won a landmark High Court appeal, ending a 12-year legal battle against the NT government.
The High Court on Wednesday restored awards of exemplary damages to Ethan Austral, Josiah Binsaris, Leroy O'Shea and Keiran Webster, who were aged between 15 and 17 when they were exposed to CS gas during a disturbance at the Darwin detention facility in August 2014.
The court awarded each man $50,000 in exemplary damages, overturning a 2025 Northern Territory Court of Appeal decision that had set aside an earlier damages award.
The case stems from an incident on 21 August 2014, when the four boys were being held in Don Dale's Behavioural Management Unit (BMU), a high-security section of the youth detention centre. Court documents show they remained locked in their cells and did not participate in a disturbance caused by another detainee, Jake Roper.
The BMU cells had no windows, no air conditioning and no running water for drinking or washing hands. The boys were allowed out of their cells for only one hour a day.
As the disturbance unfolded, officers from the Immediate Action Team, a specialist unit from Darwin's adult prison, were called to Don Dale. They arrived equipped with helmets, shields, batons and CS gas foggers.
Court records show the Director of Correctional Services authorised the deployment of CS gas throughout the BMU. When asked whether officers intended to "gas the lot of them", including boys not involved in the disturbance, the director replied: "I don't care how much gas you use."
The gas was deployed 10 times into the confined unit. CS gas, commonly known as tear gas, causes intense irritation to the eyes, nose and throat and can cause breathing difficulties. Training materials available to officers warned that use in confined spaces could result in serious injury or death.
The four boys were exposed to the gas for several minutes. Leroy O'Shea, who had asthma, later told the court he believed he was going to die. Keiran Webster said he and O'Shea became so frightened they shook hands and said goodbye to each other because they thought they would stop breathing.
After being tear-gassed, the boys were handcuffed, hosed down on a basketball court and later transferred to the adult Berrimah prison.
The four men launched legal action against the Northern Territory government in 2015. Their claims were initially dismissed by the Northern Territory Supreme Court and later rejected by the Court of Appeal.
However, in 2020, the High Court unanimously ruled the use of CS gas against the boys constituted unlawful battery. The court found the deployment of the gas breached the Northern Territory's Weapons Control Act and was not authorised under youth detention laws.
A subsequent damages hearing in 2023 resulted in each man being awarded $200,000 in exemplary damages, designed to punish particularly serious wrongdoing and deter future misconduct. That award was later overturned by the Court of Appeal, prompting a further appeal to the High Court.
In a statement following Wednesday's decision, the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA), which represented the men, said the ruling confirmed the NT government must be held accountable for its actions.
NAAJA Civil Managing Lawyer Andrew Roberts said successive governments had resisted accountability throughout the 12-year legal battle.
"Today's decision recognises the seriousness of the NT Government's conduct," Mr Roberts said.
"At the end of the day, these were vulnerable children in the care of the state.
"The Government has to do better and must be accountable for its actions."
Mr O'Shea said the outcome was about more than financial compensation.
"Winning this case means a lot to me. It's not just about the money — it's about recognition that what happened to us was wrong," he said.
"For a long time it felt like no one was listening to what we went through. The decision shows that young people in detention still have rights and deserve to be treated with dignity and care."
Mr Roberts said no officer involved in the incident had been held personally accountable and no apology had been issued by the government.
"Even to this day, the Government has not apologised for their wrongdoing or held any of the individual officers to account," he said.
The Don Dale detention centre became a national symbol of youth justice failures following the broadcast of ABC's Four Corners investigation in 2016, which exposed the treatment of children in detention and led to the establishment of the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory.
For the four men at the centre of Wednesday's decision, the ruling brings to a close more than a decade of litigation over an incident Australia's highest court has repeatedly found was unlawful.
