Government appears ready to agree a financial settlement with the family of missing landfill worker Anna Evans.
Cabinet minutes show it has allocated $1.236 million to the ministry responsible for the landfill site ahead of a possible out-of-court settlement.
The 37-year-old mother of five was last seen alive on 26 Jan. 2011 while on a shift for the Department of Environmental Health.
Despite an island-wide search and a 14-year investigation, her case is still open. Whether her death, which is presumed to have occurred at the landfill site, was an accident or something more sinister remains a mystery.
Her sister Noreen Dixon filed a ‘protective writ’ against the Department of Environmental Health in 2017, which preserved the right to bring legal action once ‘letters of administration’ for Evans’s estate were obtained. That happened in 2020 after Evans was declared legally dead.
The writ included a claim for damages as a result of the “loss/death of Anna Evans caused by a wrongful act, neglect or default of the defendant”, who was her employer at the time.
Now it appears government is ready to settle the matter out of court.
Note-form minutes from a 25 Feb. Cabinet meeting, circulated to the media, indicated that it approved “a settlement to the family of the late Anna Evans”.
At the same meeting, the minutes indicate government agreed to transfer $1.236 million from the Ministry of Health and Wellness budget to the Ministry of Sustainability, which has responsibility for the landfill site, for a “settlement claim”.
The Compass understands that no settlement has been agreed at this point and that discussions are ongoing. Asked for comment a spokesperson for the Ministry of Sustainability said in a written response to the Compass, “The Grand Court Cause No. 20 of 2017, Dixon v The Department of Environmental Health, relating to the family of the late Anna Evans, is an ongoing litigation matter. It is yet to be settled by the parties involved.”
Dixon, who raised Evans’s five children after her disappearance, has led the family’s efforts to seek resolution following her unexplained death.
It was Dixon, with the support of Walkers law firm, that obtained a death certificate for her sister following a long and complex legal process.
Speaking to the Compass following that milestone in 2020, Dixon said she had accepted that she may never know how her sister had died.
“We would like to know that. Somebody knows, but they haven’t come forward before, and I don’t think they will now. Let God judge them,” she said.
During that interview, she told Compass that the children had been traumatised by the loss of their mother.
Daughter Chelsea Evans, who was 12 when her mother went missing, said at that time, “It took a piece of me.
“I did not have the opportunity to have that mother-daughter time. I was robbed of that. I still feel that part of me will never be filled.”
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