Derek Achong

For­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira's $20 mil­lion med­ical neg­li­gence law­suit, in re­la­tion to the death of her hus­band, was dis­missed yes­ter­day by a High Court judge due to a breach of the Civ­il Pro­ce­dure Rules by her at­tor­neys. Jus­tice Vasheist Kokaram, who was pre­sid­ing over the mat­ter, dis­missed the claim af­ter Tesheira's at­tor­neys twice failed to file ex­pert med­ical ev­i­dence, cru­cial to her case, by the date or­dered by the court.

Kokaram said: "Hav­ing re­gard to the le­gal per­son­al­i­ties in­volved in the con­duct and car­riage of her case, and the sev­er­al un­for­tu­nate mis-steps along the way, I can on­ly sur­mise that there must be forces larg­er than us pre­vent­ing her from in­ves­ti­gat­ing the death of her hus­band."

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Jus­tice Kokaram's de­ci­sion, a de­ject­ed Tesheira vowed to take the mat­ter fur­ther. "I will re­port them (her lawyers) to the Law As­so­ci­a­tion's Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee," a sob­bing Tesheira said. She ex­pressed her in­ten­tion to take le­gal ac­tion against the lawyer who failed to file the doc­u­ments in the High Court reg­istry in De­cem­ber last year.

She al­so claimed it was her be­lief there was po­lit­i­cal mis­chief which led to the er­ror in her case. Tesheira's le­gal team in­clud­ed Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes and at­tor­ney Si­mon de la Bastide, both of whom where in­struct­ed by Nyree Al­fon­so. Tesheira's med­ical neg­li­gence suit for more than $20 mil­lion was ini­ti­at­ed af­ter her hus­band's death on April 13, 2004.

She al­leged that her hus­band's death was due to med­ical neg­li­gence at the Gulf View Med­ical Cen­tre, La Ro­maine. Her law­suit al­so list­ed urol­o­gist Dr Lester Goetz and anaes­the­si­ol­o­gist Dr Crisen Jen­dra Roopc­hand. All three de­nied the al­le­ga­tions.

Rus­sell Tesheira, 53, was vice-pres­i­dent of sales and agen­cies ad­min­is­tra­tion at Cli­co. Af­ter her at­tor­neys failed to file the doc­u­ments with­in the time­frame stip­u­lat­ed by Kokaram at a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence last year, they were im­posed with sanc­tions un­der Sec­tion 26 of the Civ­il Pro­ce­dure Rules.

In Jan­u­ary, Tesheira filed a par­al­lel con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion be­fore Kokaram, in which she claimed the sanc­tions im­posed un­der the rules were un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. The Law As­so­ci­a­tion in­ter­vened in­to the mo­tion as an in­ter­est­ed par­ty. While mak­ing sub­mis­sions at the last hear­ing of the mat­ter, the as­so­ci­a­tion's lawyer said sanc­tions im­posed for the late fil­ing of doc­u­ments in Sec­tion 26 of the rules af­fect­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al right of ac­cess to jus­tice.

He al­so de­scribed sec­tions of the rules as in­con­sis­tent and ar­bi­trary. Be­fore dis­miss­ing Tesheira's case yes­ter­day, Jus­tice Kokaram ruled the sanc­tions were con­sti­tu­tion­al. He stat­ed: "The new rules were de­signed to bring about a par­a­digm shift in the prac­tice of civ­il lit­i­ga­tion, not to a sys­tem of an­ar­chy or op­pres­sion.

"It pro­motes a sys­tem that is pre­dictable, pro­por­tion­al, eco­nom­i­cal, fair and just in its re­sults." In dis­miss­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion, Tesheira was or­dered to pay the le­gal cost of the State. She al­so has to bear the costs of Dr Goetz's le­gal team which in­clud­ed Christo­pher Hamel-Smith, SC.

The State was rep­re­sent­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sell Mar­tineau and at­tor­neys Vasheisht Ma­haraj and Ger­ald Ramdeen. Kem­ra­jh Har­rikissoon ap­peared for the med­ical cen­tre and Dr Roopc­hand. The cen­tre and Roopc­hand were re­fused costs by Kokaram who said their ac­tions in re­fus­ing to me­di­ate the dis­pute was "un­rea­son­able."