One of Scotland’s most dangerous inmates sued prison bosses for £30,000 after deliberately swallowing a pen.
Tiffany Scott suffered a perforated bowel after the incident in Edinburgh’s Saughton Prison five years ago.
But the court bid backfired after a sheriff dismissed her claim and ordered her to pay legal expenses expected to run into thousands of pounds.
Scott, a transgender criminal formerly known as Andrew Burns, claimed she swallowed the pen in after it was given to her by a prison officer in January 2013.
She claimed she was a suicide risk and shouldn’t have been given it due to the threat of self-harm.
Scott sued the Scottish Ministers, as the body in charge of the jail, and was expected to represent herself at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday.
But Sheriff Robert Fife threw out the case after she refused to appear via video-link.
Scott has now been hit with an order to pay hefty defence costs, including an advocate’s fees.
Prison chiefs denied Scott was under extra protection when the pen was swallowed, deeming her “no apparent risk”, and contesting that a guard handed it to her.
Instead, lawyers for the Scottish Ministers suggested she may have got hold of the pen during a visit to court in Kirkcaldy the same month.
There she had struggled with G4S guards, spitting and demanding to be taken to hospital.
It was suggested that she might have created the altercation to get hold of a pen from one of the guards trying to restrain her.
Scott, 26, from Kinglassie, Fife, has a reputation for violence, assaulting inmates, security officers and hospital nurses.
She is subject to an Order for Lifelong Restriction, and will only be released when she is no longer considered risk to public safety.
She has a string of conviction for crimes including assault, vandalism and resisting arrest.
The Scottish Prison Service said: “We don’t comment on individual prisoners.”
