Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty (OSH Au­thor­i­ty) has with­drawn its case against the T&T Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny (NP) and a cook­ing gas dis­trib­u­tor over a gas ex­plo­sion in Mar­aval in Feb­ru­ary 2015. 

The au­thor­i­ty an­nounced its de­ci­sion as its case against NP and North Plant LPG Co­op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Lim­it­ed came up for hear­ing be­fore In­dus­tri­al Court Pres­i­dent Heather Seale, and Judges Azeem Mo­hammed, and Enid Zephyrine last week. 

The de­ci­sion was based on ap­pli­ca­tions from North Plant’s lawyers, Kelvin Ramkissoon and Nizam Saladeen, and NP’s lawyer, Fa­rees Ho­sein. 

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, the com­pa­nies’ lawyers claimed that the pros­e­cu­tion should be end­ed based on a land­mark Privy Coun­cil rul­ing on the time lim­it for the au­thor­i­ty to ini­ti­ate such pros­e­cu­tions. 

 In Sep­tem­ber last year, the coun­try’s high­est ap­pel­late court ruled that such pros­e­cu­tions un­der the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act (OS­HA) should be ini­ti­at­ed with­in six months of breach­es com­ing to the at­ten­tion of one of the au­thor­i­ty’s in­spec­tors. Civ­il pro­ceed­ings un­der the leg­is­la­tion are per­mit­ted with­in two years. 

The com­pa­nies point­ed out that the case against them, al­leg­ing mul­ti­ple breach­es of the leg­is­la­tion, was ini­ti­at­ed over two and a half years af­ter the ex­plo­sion oc­curred. 

Dur­ing Fri­day’s hear­ing, the au­thor­i­ty’s lawyer, Pa­tri­cia Cross, agreed with the po­si­tion ad­vanced by the com­pa­nies. 

Seale point­ed out that the new le­gal prece­dent set would af­fect dozens of sim­i­lar pend­ing pros­e­cu­tions from the au­thor­i­ty, which were stayed while the Privy Coun­cil was mulling over the case. 

“We ex­pect that we will be back here with nu­mer­ous par­ties soon,” Seale said. 

The ex­plo­sion oc­curred at Roy­al Palm Plaza at 10.35 am on Feb­ru­ary 5, 2015. 

In to­tal, a dozen cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees of El Pecos Grill restau­rant were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured. 

Four months lat­er, one of the vic­tims, John Soo Ping Chow suc­cumbed to his in­juries at the Jack­son Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal in Mi­a­mi, Flori­da.

A fire in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­port from the T&T Fire Ser­vice sug­gest­ed that there was a gas leak in the de­liv­ery line of the North Plant LPG’s truck. 

How­ev­er, the re­port deemed the ex­plo­sion as ac­ci­den­tal as it stat­ed, “the most prob­a­ble cause of the fire was as a re­sult of ig­ni­tion to a mix­ture of LPG and air, with­in the rear pas­sage­way near the El Pecos LPG cylin­ders”. 

The ex­plo­sion re­sult­ed in nu­mer­ous law­suits from vic­tims and busi­ness­es that were af­fect­ed. 

Some of the cas­es dealt with com­pen­sa­tion claims from Soo Ping Chow’s fam­i­ly and those who were in­jured in the ex­plo­sion. 

The oth­ers were claims from the in­sur­ance com­pa­nies of neigh­bour­ing restau­rants that were af­fect­ed by the blast, who are su­ing to re­coup the pay­outs they would have made to their clients.

In 2020, Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams up­held a neg­li­gence law­suit against North Plant from Con­ti­nen­tal Cor­po­ra­tion Lim­it­ed, which owns the plaza. 

While Con­ti­nen­tal claimed $2.1 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion to cov­er the dam­age to its build­ing and loss of rent while it was be­ing re­paired, Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams on­ly or­dered $600,000 in nom­i­nal dam­ages as she ruled that the com­pa­ny had failed to pro­vide spe­cif­ic de­tails of its loss­es as re­quired. 

The Court of Ap­peal up­held the judge’s find­ing on li­a­bil­i­ty but re­duced the com­pen­sa­tion or­dered to $50,000.

In March 2022, Jus­tice Ricky Rahim up­held a com­pen­sa­tion case brought by North Plant LPG’s em­ploy­ee Gre­go­ry Maicoo, who was se­ri­ous­ly in­jured in the blast. The com­pa­ny was or­dered to pay Maicoo $160,000 in com­pen­sa­tion. 

North Plant ap­pealed the rul­ing as it ar­gued that it had main­tained prop­er safe­ty sys­tems, train­ing and equip­ment, and that the cause of the ex­plo­sion was not proven.

Last month, the Ap­peal Court ruled that Jus­tice Rahim’s find­ings could not be fault­ed.

Some of the re­main­ing cas­es have been as­signed to Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo, who is cur­rent­ly deal­ing with the case brought by Soo Ping Chow’s rel­a­tive. 

The oth­er cas­es are ex­pect­ed to go to tri­al af­ter Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo de­ter­mines Soo Ping Chow’s claim.