Jensen La Vende

Gulf View Med­ical, the pri­vate health fa­cil­i­ty that is be­ing sued by for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Tesheira, was blocked on Mon­day from re­mov­ing it­self from the med­ical neg­li­gence law­suit, as well as be­ing de­nied leave to ap­ply to the Privy Coun­cil to ap­peal the court's de­ci­sion.Be­fore ap­pel­lant judges Al­lan Men­don­ca, Gre­go­ry Smith and Mau­reen Ra­j­nauth-Lee, Gulf View, which was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Kem­ra­jh Har­rikissoon, was or­dered to pay the cost of Tesheira's le­gal team af­ter be­ing de­nied the ap­peal.

It was Har­rikissoon's claim that af­ter sur­geon Dr Lester Goetz, one of two doc­tors list­ed in Tesheira's law­suit, opt­ed to set­tle the claim against him in Sep­tem­ber, 2012, his client should have been ex­empt­ed. He ar­gued that the ad­mis­sion of one par­ty ab­solved the oth­ers, name­ly his client, of any guilt. Har­rikissoon sub­mit­ted that au­thor­i­ties are clear that there could not be any ap­pro­pri­a­tion of debt in that if one par­ty as­sumed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, then oth­er named par­ties were au­to­mat­i­cal­ly ab­solved from any and all wrong­do­ing.

He ar­gued that any­thing to the con­trary was not le­gal and if the judges were mind­ed not to rule in his favour he should be grant­ed leave to ap­peal to the coun­try's high­est court, the Privy Coun­cil.In re­sponse, Tesheira's at­tor­ney, Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes, sub­mit­ted that the ap­pli­ca­tion should be re­fused on the ground that there was no jus­ti­cia­ble is­sue to ad­dress. He ar­gued that Goetz's de­ci­sion to set­tle did not ex­empt Gulf View Med­ical from any li­a­bil­i­ties.

The case

Tesheira in­sti­tut­ed the claim af­ter her 53-year-old hus­band, Rus­sell Tesheira, died at the cen­tre on April 13, 2004. He was vice-pres­i­dent of sales and agen­cies ad­min­is­tra­tion at in­sur­ance com­pa­ny Cli­co. In May 2012 High Court Judge Vashiest Kokaram dis­missed a $20 mil­lion law­suit af­ter Tesheira's lawyers twice failed to file ex­pert med­ical ev­i­dence, cru­cial to her case, by the spec­i­fied dates. Tesheira ap­pealed the de­ci­sion.

Be­fore the ap­peal was heard, Tesheira came to the set­tle­ment with Goetz. The mat­ter against the pri­vate hos­pi­tal re­sumes in June.