Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Un­less the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al takes the mat­ter to the Privy Coun­cil, three Ap­peal Court judges yes­ter­day cleared the way for nine men freed of the mur­der of busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man to col­lect a $20 mil­lion pay­out.

Jus­tices of Ap­peal Nolan Bereaux, Mark Mo­hammed and Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh found that the nine men freed of mur­der­ing Naipaul-Cool­man—Sher­von and De­von Pe­ters, An­tho­ny Gloster, Joel Fras­er, Ronald Arm­strong, Kei­da and Jameel Gar­cia, Mar­lon Trim­ming­ham and An­to­nio Charles - should be award­ed the al­ready agreed-up­on sum, which would be the largest pay­out by the state in a law­suit.

On Jan­u­ary 30, 2023, High Court Mas­ter Martha Alexan­der as­sessed the dam­ages for the nine men and found that each should be giv­en $2.1 mil­lion in a de­fault judg­ment. The amount did not in­clude le­gal costs.

On Jan­u­ary 8, 2021, Jus­tice Joan Charles grant­ed the de­fault judg­ment, with the as­sess­ment be­gin­ning on No­vem­ber 4, 2022. On De­cem­ber 6, 2023, Charles set aside her ear­li­er de­fault judg­ment and found that the men’s orig­i­nal ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion claim was not prop­er­ly served on the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice as re­quired un­der the State Li­a­bil­i­ty and Pro­ceed­ings Act.

In May 2016, the nine men were freed of mur­der and lat­er sued the state for ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion. Gloster was, how­ev­er, killed in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing in 2021.

The State ap­pealed the award fol­low­ing pub­lic out­cry over the amount to be paid. It was ar­gued that the de­fault judg­ment was on­ly giv­en be­cause the case file went miss­ing, prompt­ing then-at­tor­ney gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion led by re­tired Jus­tice Stan­ley John.

With­in a month, John found that the case file was hand­ed over to the act­ing so­lic­i­tor gen­er­al. Rol­ston Nel­son, SC, was al­so re­tained by the AG to ad­vise on how to get the de­fault judg­ment set aside.

In their judg­ment yes­ter­day, the judges found that the state was ful­ly aware of the mat­ter lead­ing up to the judg­ment.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, coun­sel ap­pear­ing for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ful­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed (so far as the rules al­lowed) in the as­sess­ment. No ex­pla­na­tion set­ting out the rea­sons why no ac­tion was tak­en to set aside the judg­ment was pro­vid­ed by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. The ap­pli­ca­tion on­ly came af­ter harsh pub­lic crit­i­cism of the fail­ure to de­fend the claim.

“In my judg­ment, the re­spon­dent did not act as soon as rea­son­ably prac­ti­ca­ble af­ter he found out that the judg­ment had been en­tered against him. The de­lay in this case has been un­ex­plained and all the while, the dam­ages as­sess­ment pro­ceed­ed with the full par­tic­i­pa­tion of the State,” Jus­tice Bereaux said on be­half of the pan­el in a writ­ten rul­ing on the mat­ter.

The judges added that through­out the ini­tial mat­ter, at­tor­neys Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Ganesh Sa­roop and Natasha Bis­ram went above and be­yond the call of du­ty to en­sure the state was in­formed.

“The at­tor­neys for the ap­pel­lants did what was re­quired of them and in some in­stances went be­yond what was re­quired in li­ais­ing with at­tor­neys-at-law from the Chief State So­lic­i­tor’s and So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s de­part­ment in bring­ing to their at­ten­tion the progress of the case.” Guardian Me­dia called and mes­saged At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie on whether the mat­ter will be ap­pealed, but up to press time there was no re­sponse.

The state was rep­re­sent­ed by Rol­ston Nel­son, SC, Ria Mo­hammed-David­son and Ele­na Arau­jo.

In a me­dia re­lease fol­low­ing the rul­ing, Ram­lo­gan said, “We wel­come the land­mark judg­ment of the Court of Ap­peal in this his­toric mat­ter which has been the sub­ject of much colour­ful po­lit­i­cal and so­cial com­men­tary. The rule of law has pre­vailed be­cause in­de­pen­dent ju­di­cial analy­sis of the law and facts was not swayed by the pub­lic po­lit­i­cal pos­tur­ing.”