Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Just one year ago, Bet­ty Sookhai, her hus­band Ramdeo and their daugh­ter Deanne led com­fort­able lives. They all worked in the fam­i­ly's mil­lion-dol­lar print­ing busi­ness lo­cat­ed at De Gannes Vil­lage, Siparia. When most peo­ple were asleep, Deanne toiled with her par­ents at night and still man­aged to rise ear­ly to get ready for school. In Jan­u­ary, how­ev­er, their lives took a down­ward spi­ral when Ramdeo died from heart fail­ure. With­in a month, Sookhai and her daugh­ter were evict­ed from the fam­i­ly prop­er­ty and the print­ery was torn down. Their ap­pli­ances, fur­ni­ture and oth­er valu­ables were smashed and packed like trash at the road­side.

Dur­ing a tear­ful in­ter­view last week, Deanne said they have now been forced to rent a tiny apart­ment and live off their fast dwin­dling sav­ings. They have ap­plied for a grant to as­sist them in pay­ing rent be­cause most of their sav­ings went to le­gal fees and fu­ner­al ex­pens­es. The evic­tion, Deanne said, was the cul­mi­na­tion of a 30-year-old court bat­tle which re­moved her par­ents as joint ten­ants of their es­tate be­cause of a delin­quent at­tor­ney who failed to file their court doc­u­ments in good time.

Deanne ex­plained that in 1975, her fa­ther pur­chased the prop­er­ty and in­clud­ed his par­ents names on the deed as joint ten­ants. She ex­plained that a rel­a­tive lat­er in­flu­enced the par­ents to trans­fer that in­ter­est to him. "My dad re­mained un­aware of this con­veyance and at­tempt­ed to evict (name called) af­ter my grand­par­ents died," Deanne said. For 16 years, the mat­ter was de­layed in court and in 2000, a San Fer­nan­do judge ac­knowl­edged both par­ties as joint own­ers with equal shares of the land, Deanne said.

How­ev­er, she claimed that their at­tor­ney nev­er ad­vised them to sep­a­rate the house and busi­ness from the land and a year lat­er, fol­low­ing an ap­peal, an­oth­er court or­der was hand­ed down which ren­dered the Sookhais pow­er­less in pro­tect­ing their in­ter­est.

This was due to the con­tin­u­ous de­lays by the at­tor­ney in fil­ing court doc­u­ments, Deanne claimed. The fam­i­ly, how­ev­er, con­test­ed the new rul­ing and the mat­ter came up for hear­ing in 2006. How­ev­er, it was not in favour of the Sookhais as the at­tor­ney again failed to rep­re­sent them be­fore the court. In 2008, the is­sue was brought be­fore the Court of Ap­peal but the Sookhai fam­i­ly lost the case on the ba­sis of fail­ure to fol­low court pro­ce­dures. The court had in­struct­ed that up­on ex­e­cu­tion of the deed, a share of the sale had to be paid to the Sookhai fam­i­ly. At that time, the Sookhai fam­i­ly had in­curred le­gal costs to the amount of $235,000. How­ev­er, Deanne said no mon­ey was ever paid to them.

'We lost every­thing'

In Jan­u­ary, Deanne said her fa­ther suf­fo­cat­ed on his own vom­it and died of heart fail­ure. "We con­tin­ued to stay in the house be­cause we had no mon­ey to ac­quire an­oth­er prop­er­ty. Just one month af­ter dad­dy died on Feb­ru­ary 5, two po­lice of­fi­cers with guns and two court mar­shals came to the house around 5 am along with a gang of over 30 men," Deanne re­called. She said the men used a bolt cut­ter to cut through the locks. "We begged them to give us time to re­lo­cate but (name called) showed no mer­cy. He tied the print­ing ma­chines with chains and with the as­sis­tance of a hiab, he dragged them out one by one in a reck­less man­ner, smash­ing them to pieces," Deanne added.

The ma­chines which are worth $1.2 mil­lion were de­stroyed. "House­hold ar­ti­cles such as the din­ing ta­ble, liv­ing room set and beds were packed on­to the street. Our neigh­bours wit­nessed the hor­ror as our ex­pen­sive equip­ment end­ed up on the street," Deanne said. She added: "In the blink of an eye we lost every­thing. We have been forced to seek re­lief from so­cial wel­fare to as­sist us in se­cur­ing var­i­ous grants to rent an apart­ment. We have no fur­ni­ture be­cause peo­ple stole our stuff when it was dumped on the road," Deanne wept.

While Deanne has start­ed re­build­ing their shat­tered lives, she is con­cerned about the health of her moth­er. Sookhai said she could not bear to see the ru­ins of the house and print­ery she helped to build. "It hurts me to see that all we built is gone. Our prop­er­ty was worth so much and now we have noth­ing. We have to beg for help," Sookhai cried. She called on the Gov­ern­ment to put mea­sures in place to pro­tect peo­ple who lost their prop­er­ties be­cause of delin­quent at­tor­neys who fail to fol­low civ­il ser­vice pro­ce­dures. Sookhai said the ac­tions of the delin­quent at­tor­ney had robbed her of her liveli­hood and her life sav­ing's.

Calls on AG, Law As­so­ci­a­tion to in­ter­vene

The fam­i­ly called on At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, to put strin­gent mea­sures in place to pro­tect cit­i­zens from le­gal mis­deeds. Mean­while, in a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle on Ju­ly 3, Chief Jus­tice Archie made a call for at­tor­neys to be made to con­form to the Civ­il Pro­ce­dure Rules 1998, which are de­signed to com­bat lack of dis­ci­pline and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with­in the le­gal pro­fes­sion. Archie said there must be ad­her­ence to civ­il pro­ce­dure rules which im­pose time­lines by which lawyers must file doc­u­ments. The rules al­so reg­u­late a spe­cif­ic pro­ce­dure which can be used to ap­ply to the court for re­lief from the penal­ties which par­ties face when lawyers fail to com­ply with fixed time­lines.

How­ev­er, some lawyers and judges with­in the Law As­so­ci­a­tion have re­sist­ed and re­ject­ed the rules say­ing they may do more harm than good. The ju­di­cial of­fi­cers have ar­gued that the re­moval of ju­di­cial dis­cre­tion in pro­ce­dur­al mat­ters has been forc­ing judges to mech­a­nis­ti­cal­ly ap­ply rules to shut lit­i­gants out even though this re­sults in in­jus­tice, sim­i­lar to what hap­pened to the Sookhai fam­i­ly.