The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has suc­ceed­ed in its bid to set aside a $20 mil­lion de­fault judg­ment against it in a ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion law­suit brought by nine men for­mer­ly ac­cused of the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man. 

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Joan Charles up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion to set aside the de­fault judg­ment, which was grant­ed by her in Jan­u­ary 2021, and the sub­se­quent as­sess­ment of dam­ages for the men that was com­plet­ed by High Court Mas­ter Martha Alexan­der in Jan­u­ary this year. 

In her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Charles agreed that the court fil­ings were not prop­er­ly served on the AG’s Of­fice, as re­quired un­der the State Li­a­bil­i­ty and Pro­ceed­ings Act, de­spite an ac­cep­tance that an of­fi­cer was not of­fi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed to ac­cept ser­vice and that the AG’s Of­fice pre­vi­ous­ly ac­cept­ed sim­i­lar ser­vice in oth­er cas­es. 

“The rules re­lat­ing to ser­vice of orig­i­nat­ing doc­u­ments and no­tices on the State are clear and manda­to­ry—as such, they must be com­plied with,” she said. 

The out­come was an­nounced by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour in a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. 

Stat­ing that he was pleased by the out­come and thank­ing his le­gal team led by Se­nior Coun­sel Rol­ston Nel­son, Ar­mour said, “As a con­se­quence, all sub­se­quent pro­ceed­ings, in­clud­ing the award of dam­ages, have been set aside.” 

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the rul­ing, the men’s le­gal team filed an ur­gent ap­peal seek­ing to over­turn it, as it meant that their case was to­tal­ly dis­missed. 

In their court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, they claimed that the rul­ing would have an un­fore­seen ef­fect on all lit­i­ga­tion filed against the State, as it was the first time that such an is­sue with ser­vice was raised and up­held. 

“This will lead to chaos and con­fu­sion and clear­ly has the po­ten­tial to bring the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice in­to dis­re­pute,” at­tor­ney Ganesh Sa­roop said. 

The at­tor­ney claimed that the State could use sim­i­lar ar­gu­ments to have oth­er cas­es set aside that can­not be re­filed, as they fall out­side the four-year statu­to­ry lim­it. 

“This has deep-seat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al im­pli­ca­tions for the fun­da­men­tal right of pro­tec­tion of the law, the right to a fair hear­ing and ac­cess to jus­tice,” Sa­roop said. 

In the ap­pli­ca­tion to set aside, Le­gal Di­rec­tor of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Sec­re­tari­at Te­nille Ramkissoon, claimed that af­ter the case was filed by the group’s le­gal team, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, on May 29, 2020, it was served on a State coun­sel at­tached to the Of­fice of the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al al­most a month lat­er. 

She claimed that af­ter no ap­pear­ance or de­fence was en­tered by the State, the group’s le­gal team ap­plied for the de­fault judge­ment be­fore Jus­tice Charles on Au­gust 5, 2020. 

The ap­pli­ca­tion was served on an act­ing court clerk at the Chief State So­lic­i­tor’s De­part­ment on No­vem­ber 12, 2020. On the same date, the Court Of­fice is­sued a no­tice of hear­ing to the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al. How­ev­er, the no­tice was served on the Chief State So­lic­i­tor’s De­part­ment al­most a week lat­er. 

The AG’s Of­fice was not rep­re­sent­ed at the hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Charles, who grant­ed the de­fault judge­ment to the group on Jan­u­ary 8, 2021. 

Ramkissoon sug­gest­ed that the law­suit was im­prop­er­ly served on the Chief State So­lic­i­tor’s De­part­ment, as lit­i­ga­tion against the State should be served on the AG’s Of­fice through the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al or per­son­nel who are des­ig­nat­ed through a no­tice in the T&T Gazette. 

She al­so main­tained that the AG’s Of­fice had a strong de­fence to the case that is more than “mere­ly ar­guable”.

“In par­tic­u­lar, the claimants have not dis­charged the bur­den of show­ing there was an ab­sence of rea­son­able and prob­a­ble cause or the pros­e­cu­tion was ac­tu­at­ed by mal­ice,” Ramkissoon said. 

“The charges against the claimants were ful­ly ven­ti­lat­ed through the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. There was a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, com­mit­tal to stand tri­al and in­dict­ments filed by the DPP,” she added. 

Ramkissoon al­so took aim at Mas­ter Alexan­der’s han­dling of the as­sess­ment of the dam­ages for the group, which she not­ed was not or­dered by Jus­tice Charles when she grant­ed the de­fault judg­ment. 

Stat­ing that Mas­ter Alexan­der made sev­er­al er­rors of law and fact, Ramkissoon claimed that she (Alexan­der) erred by ap­ply­ing the spe­cif­ic med­ical ev­i­dence of the psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fects of be­ing on re­mand for a lengthy pe­ri­od, re­lat­ed to one of the men, to his for­mer co-ac­cused. 

In de­cid­ing to award ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.1 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for each of the men, Mas­ter Alexan­der said, “In the view of the court, if each claimant suf­fered the same ex­pe­ri­ences, al­most si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, and gave ev­i­dence to that ef­fect, this is not demon­stra­tive of col­lu­sion but rather of a fac­tu­al sim­i­lar­i­ty of cir­cum­stances en­ti­tling each of com­pen­sa­tion.”

Mas­ter Alexan­der added, “In fact, the wit­ness state­ments might have sim­i­lar con­tents, based on their sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences, but these were ex­pressed dif­fer­ent­ly, with some claimants fo­cus­ing on the ex­treme heat, foul smells, and cramped, un­san­i­tary con­di­tions and how those af­fect­ed their si­nus­es and oth­er health is­sues.”

How­ev­er, Ramkissoon sug­gest­ed that Mas­ter Alexan­der was re­quired to con­sid­er each of the men’s cas­es in­di­vid­u­al­ly. 

She al­so point­ed out that Mas­ter Alexan­der did not have the ju­ris­dic­tion to award ex­em­plary dam­ages to An­tho­ny Gloster, who was mur­dered in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing in Diego Mar­tin in late 2021 and whose fa­ther was al­lowed to con­tin­ue the case on his be­half. 

Is­sues with the case arose ear­li­er this year, af­ter re­ports on Mas­ter Alexan­der’s as­sess­ment of dam­ages were pub­lished. 

Speak­ing to me­dia per­son­nel af­ter ini­ti­at­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the case in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, Ar­mour claimed that pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the case file had “dis­ap­peared” af­ter be­ing served on his min­istry. 

Ar­mour said: “I would not al­low my­self at this time, be­cause of due process, to ut­ter what I think oc­curred but it is sin­is­ter.”

Af­ter the in­ves­ti­ga­tion team of re­tired Judge Stan­ley John and re­tired As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Pamela Schullera-Hinds com­menced their probe, the file was “re­turned” to the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s Of­fice and hand­ed over. 

John and Schullera-Hinds de­liv­ered an in­ter­im re­port in March be­fore de­liv­er­ing their 60-page fi­nal re­port in June.

While their fi­nal re­port was not pub­lished, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the duo made a num­ber of rec­om­men­da­tions, in­clud­ing a com­plete re­struc­tur­ing of the Civ­il Law De­part­ment (CLD) of the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs (AGLA).

In an in­ter­view with this news­pa­per in ear­ly Ju­ly, John said: “It’s re­al­ly a re­struc­tur­ing of the Civ­il Law De­part­ment. The re­port is cen­tred around the com­plete re­struc­tur­ing of that de­part­ment and dig­i­tal­is­ing most of the work, you know, get­ting rid of the pa­per.”

How­ev­er, he not­ed that there was no time frame for the rec­om­men­da­tions to be im­ple­ment­ed.

“There is no time frame. That is up to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al now. Some of it has to be tak­en to Cab­i­net be­cause of some of the changes we are rec­om­mend­ing. But that is a mat­ter now for the ex­ec­u­tive,” he said then. 

The AG’s Of­fice was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ria Mo­hammed-David­son and Ele­na Arau­jo. The men were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, Natasha Bis­ram and Ganesh Sa­roop. 

About the Naipaul-Cool­man’s case

For­mer Xtra Food chief ex­ec­u­tive Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man was ab­duct­ed from her Ch­agua­nas home on De­cem­ber 19, 2006. 

A $122,000 ran­som was paid by her fam­i­ly but she was not re­leased and her body was nev­er found.

Sher­von and De­von Pe­ters, their broth­er An­tho­ny Gloster, Joel Fras­er, Ronald Arm­strong, broth­ers Kei­da and Jameel Gar­cia, Mar­lon Trim­ming­ham, his broth­er Earl, Lyn­don Charles, Al­lan “Scan­ny” Mar­tin and An­to­nio Charles were even­tu­al­ly charged with the crime

Dur­ing the tri­al be­fore for­mer High Court Judge and cur­rent Ap­pel­late Judge Mal­colm Holdip and a 12-mem­ber ju­ry, State pros­e­cu­tors con­tend­ed that the Naipaul-Cool­man was held cap­tive in a house in Up­per La Puer­ta, Diego Mar­tin, be­fore she was killed and dis­mem­bered.

Through­out the tri­al, de­fence at­tor­neys point­ed out mul­ti­ple in­con­sis­ten­cies in the ev­i­dence. They ques­tioned the men­tal health of the State’s main wit­ness Keon Gloster, who claimed he was co­erced by po­lice in­to im­pli­cat­ing the ac­cused men. They al­so con­tend­ed that a gun linked to the kid­nap­ping crime scene was plant­ed in one of the ac­cused men’s homes.

When the tri­al was at an ad­vanced stage, Mar­tin and two fel­low pris­on­ers at the Port-of-Spain State Prison staged a dar­ing es­cape, where a po­lice of­fi­cer was mur­dered. Mar­tin was shot and killed by po­lice in a shootout at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. 

Fras­er was freed be­fore the ju­ry con­sid­ered the case, as Jus­tice Holdip up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion al­leg­ing that there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence link­ing him to the crime. 

The tri­al end­ed in 2016 with the ju­ry ac­quit­ting eight of the men and or­der­ing a re­tri­al for Earl Trim­ming­ham and Lyn­don Charles.