While Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny says a lack of in­for­ma­tion from at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing fam­i­lies of four de­ceased divers and their com­pa­ny, Land and Ma­rine Con­struc­tion Ser­vices (LM­SC), is frus­trat­ing ef­forts to process com­pen­sa­tion for the 2020 tragedy, at­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har says he is stick­ing with a re­quest for a $5 mil­lion ex-gra­tia pay­ment from the state-owned com­pa­ny.

On Mon­day, Paria said its at­tor­neys con­tin­ue to ex­change cor­re­spon­dence with those who had pre­sent­ed com­pen­sa­tion claims as a re­sult of the 2022 div­ing tragedy. How­ev­er, it said the process re­quires a con­sid­ered and bal­anced ap­proach. How­ev­er, Ra­mad­har, who rep­re­sents the fam­i­ly of div­er Fyzal Kur­ban and Aliyah Hen­ry, daugh­ter of div­er Yusuf Hen­ry, yes­ter­day said Paria wants to en­gage in “tab­u­lat­ed le­gal­ism” and is re­quest­ing in­for­ma­tion like the divers’ age and payslip. He said this had noth­ing to do with his clients, and Paria knew how to ac­cess the in­for­ma­tion.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence at his San Fer­nan­do of­fice, Ra­mad­har said his le­gal team had sent two pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters to Paria, who re­spond­ed by say­ing it was not li­able in the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry found the state-owned com­pa­ny neg­li­gent in the death of the Kur­ban, Hen­ry and fel­low divers Kaz­im Ali Jr and Rishi Na­gas­sar.

In a let­ter dat­ed May 13 to Paria’s at­tor­neys, Ra­mad­har’s Mag­nus Cham­bers asked for com­pen­sa­tion to make amends for a trag­ic wrong, say­ing the un­prece­dent­ed na­ture of the tragedy de­mand­ed it. The let­ter said Kur­ban’s wife, Cel­isha, was will­ing to sign a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment to not di­vulge de­tails of the claim and set­tle­ment. They re­quest­ed a re­sponse in 14 days but there had been none.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, we are in­struct­ed our client is pre­pared to ac­cept an ex-gra­tia pay­ment in the sum of $5 mil­lion as full and fi­nal set­tle­ment of all claims to be made by our client against Land and Ma­rine Con­struc­tion Ser­vices and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, as we are aware a case of this na­ture is nov­el in our ju­ris­dic­tion. There is, at present, no oth­er case in our ju­ris­dic­tion where there has been the loss of life as a re­sult of be­ing trapped in a pipeline,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The let­ter not­ed that the nov­el­ty of the case is com­pound­ed by the deaths be­ing at­trib­uted to a de­lib­er­ate de­ci­sion by of­fi­cials to re­frain from any res­cue at­tempt, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly bar­ring trained ex­ter­nal pro­fes­sion­als and fam­i­ly mem­bers from en­gag­ing in any res­cue.

The team list­ed their rea­sons for the com­pen­sa­tion, which in­clud­ed the hor­rif­ic phys­i­cal and men­tal suf­fer­ing Kur­ban en­dured, his fam­i­ly’s psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress, com­pen­sa­tion for fu­ner­al ex­pens­es and loss of fu­ture earn­ings.

While the fam­i­lies can bat­tle the is­sue in court, Ra­mad­har ques­tioned the val­ue T&T puts on hu­man lives and the pain and suf­fer­ing of those griev­ing loss. Not­ing that T&T’s ju­di­cial sys­tem seems bound to com­mon law, Ra­mad­har said the award for the loss of ex­pec­ta­tion of life was a mere $25,000. While oth­er awards for loss of earn­ings and mul­ti­pli­ers may ap­ply, he said the cu­mu­la­tive num­ber is an in­sult for peo­ple griev­ing the loss of a loved one who pro­vid­ed for their fam­i­lies.

He said this is why his team asked Paria for a glob­al fig­ure for an ex-gra­tia pay­ment. He said they would not fall in­to the trap of tab­u­lat­ed le­gal­ism, es­pe­cial­ly know­ing that Kur­ban was not a young man. To en­gage in cal­cu­lat­ing that com­pen­sa­tion, Ra­mad­har said the award the fam­i­ly may be en­ti­tled to may not in any way rep­re­sent the hard­ship the fam­i­ly faces.

Now, two years lat­er, he lament­ed that the Kur­ban fam­i­ly has to go from pil­lar to post every se­mes­ter to raise funds to keep his daugh­ter Brit­tany in uni­ver­si­ty.

“She has ex­ams, even on Fri­day af­ter­noon. We were be­fore a reg­is­trar deal­ing with work­men’s com­pen­sa­tion on be­half of the fam­i­ly. And if she does not pay her fees, she will not be able to write her ex­ams and she will be thrown out of school.”

Giv­ing ex­am­ples of lo­cal cas­es in­volv­ing the loss of life, he said Li­onel Rack­al vs Dar­ryl La Pierre and the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion re­sult­ed in a $25,000 award for the loss of ex­pec­ta­tion of life. It was the same for Er­rol Phillip vs Ra­jesh Ram­samooj. Mean­while, he said the prece­dent for loss of limb ranged from $300,000-$500,000. For defama­tion, how­ev­er, he showed the court award­ing claimants be­tween $650,000 to $1 mil­lion. Ra­mad­har said the Privy Coun­cil had al­so sig­nalled in two of its judg­ments that awards com­ing out of T&T are dis­pro­por­tion­ate to what is nec­es­sary.

Ra­mad­har said if Paria re­fus­es their re­quest, they will file High Court claims against Paria and LM­CS in Sep­tem­ber for each fam­i­ly mem­ber.

He said if they are un­sat­is­fied with the out­come at the High Court, they will go to the Court of Ap­peal and even the Privy Coun­cil.