AN ex-soldier who tried to pocket £1.6 million by claiming he was left severely disabled and super-sensitive to the cold while on duty in Estonia has been hit with a £70,000 court bill after being filmed walking with no stick and wearing sandals.
Former lance corporal Michael Mantey, 39, suffered a trench foot injury while in bitterly cold eastern Europe with the Royal Engineers in late 2017.
He sued the Ministry of Defence (MoD) over its impact, claiming he wasn’t able to walk without an aid and that he had to bundle up in four layers of clothing when he went to see a doctor, the British Daily Mail newspaper reported.
But after MoD investigators secretly filmed him in September 2021, wandering around with no stick or limp, and wearing open-toed sandals and no socks, he dropped his case.
The MoD said that, although the soldier had suffered trench foot, it had got better and he had been ‘deliberately malingering’ to claim a massive payout.
And he now faces lawyers’ bills totalling more than £70,000 after the MoD hauled him to the High Court and judge Mr Justice Eyre found his claim had been ‘fundamentally dishonest.’
In his claim, Mantey said he suffered his non-freezing cold injury (NCFI) when he had to sleep without a tent in bitterly cold Estonia while on Operation Cabrit in 2017.
An NCFI is a type of cold-sensitive injury to the hands and feet, first noted in the trenches of the First World War, caused when body tissue is exposed to excessive cold and wet conditions.
Mantey claimed he was also subjected to other periods of working in damagingly cold temperatures, but was simply told to ‘man up’ when he complained to superiors.
The Ghana-born soldier had enlisted in the British Army in 2009 and served in the 22 and 26 Engineer Regiments, before being medicall
y discharged in January 2020.
As part of his claim, Mantey said he had incurred ‘additional heating costs’ through having to keep his house warmer than he would otherwise have done, and had to ‘purchase warmer clothing.’
He said the pain in his feet had interacted with a back problem, making it difficult for him to walk and leaving him relying on a stick to get around.
But having launched his claim, Mantey ‘discontinued’ after he was secretly filmed and shown to be able to walk normally, MoD barrister Andrew Ward said during the trial last month.
Ward said the footage revealed
Mantey walking without a stick on the morning and evening, and having changed into open-toed sandals and no socks by the end of the day.
That was completely different to how he had presented to a surgeon assessing him for his claim in London in the middle of the same day, when he was seen using a stick and wearing a ‘long, warm coat.’
It was also ‘in marked contrast’ to how he appeared when he saw another medic in relation to his claim a week earlier, when he had arrived limping and wearing layers of clothing.
On that occasion, he had turned up at the doctor’s office, bundled up in ‘three to four top layers, including t-shirt, sweatshirt, a coat, jeans and boots,’ said the barrister.
Ward said the video surveillance footage showed that Mantey could indeed get around without a stick, despite his claims of permanent disability.
He said medical experts could find ‘no medical explanation’ for the difference in appearance and symptoms and put it to Mantey that his presentation with a limp and serious disability to the doctors was a ‘fake.’
