Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Sev­en­teen for­mer sol­diers have lost their law­suit seek­ing al­most $55 mil­lion in re­tire­ment ben­e­fits they nar­row­ly missed out on be­cause they served just short of the 20 years re­quired to qual­i­fy.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al case brought by the group. 

In the law­suit, the sol­diers, who reached re­tire­ment age of 45-years-old on vary­ing dates be­tween De­cem­ber 2019 and June 2024, claimed that their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were breached by the fail­ure of the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) to take ac­tion to en­sure that they were able to qual­i­fy. 

They sought to ben­e­fit from an amend­ment to the De­fence Force Reg­u­la­tions that was ap­proved af­ter their re­tire­ment and gave the Chief of De­fence Staff (CDS) the pow­er to ex­tend the terms of sol­diers by a year to en­sure they served the min­i­mum pe­ri­od to qual­i­fy for a pen­sion and gra­tu­ity. 

They al­so claimed that they could have been pro­mot­ed to ranks that ben­e­fit­ed from a high­er re­tire­ment age. 

Re­spond­ing to the law­suit, the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al sug­gest­ed that the amend­ment could not be ap­plied retroac­tive­ly as it would open up a “flood­gate” of claims from oth­er for­mer sol­diers, who al­so missed out on re­tire­ment ben­e­fits. 

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad crit­i­cised the group for de­lay­ing in bring­ing the case, as he not­ed that they would have been aware that they would not qual­i­fy based on their ages when they joined the TTDF. 

He said that con­sti­tu­tion­al lit­i­ga­tion re­quires ex­pe­di­tion, cer­tain­ty and pro­ce­dur­al dili­gence.

Stat­ing that de­lays af­fect in­sti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry, doc­u­men­tary avail­abil­i­ty and wit­ness rec­ol­lec­tion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said: “Courts must, there­fore, be vig­i­lant to en­sure that con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tions are not trans­formed in­to ve­hi­cles through which stale em­ploy­ment griev­ances are ret­ro­spec­tive­ly con­sti­tu­tion­alised.” 

He al­so re­ject­ed their claims over pro­mo­tion be­ing a so­lu­tion. 

“Pro­mo­tion with­in a dis­ci­plined mil­i­tary or­gan­i­sa­tion can­not law­ful­ly be trans­formed in­to an in­stru­ment for the ar­ti­fi­cial cre­ation of pen­sion en­ti­tle­ment,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said. 

De­spite his pre­lim­i­nary find­ings, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad still went ahead to con­sid­er the mer­its of the group’s sub­stan­tive case and ruled that it lacked mer­it. 

“The State, and the cit­i­zens, are no doubt grate­ful for the dis­tin­guished ser­vice of the sev­en­teen claimants; how­ev­er, as a mat­ter of le­gal prin­ci­ple, they have failed to es­tab­lish any con­duct or omis­sions by the gov­ern­ment which evince ir­ra­tional, un­rea­son­able and fun­da­men­tal­ly un­fair or ar­bi­trary ex­er­cise of pow­er,” he said. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that there is a mis­con­cep­tion in the pub­lic ser­vice that State em­ploy­ment has a guar­an­tee of pen­sion pro­vi­sions with­out any spe­cif­ic leg­is­la­tion. 

The group was rep­re­sent­ed by Ar­den Williams, Karyl Williams and Mari­ah Ram­rat­tan, while the AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Tr­isha Ram­lo­gan and Brent James.