A busi­ness­man from cen­tral Trinidad has been or­dered to pay a lit­tle over $40,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a for­mer cus­tomer, who was at­tacked by a pack of dogs at his busi­ness. High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed yes­ter­day or­dered com­pen­sa­tion for Les­ley-Ann An­drews as she up­held her neg­li­gence law­suit against Sur­ish Ram­lo­gan.

The law­suit stemmed from an in­ci­dent that oc­curred on De­cem­ber 5, 2018, at Ram­lo­gan’s busi­ness, which is lo­cat­ed off the Uri­ah But­ler High­way in Char­lieville. Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, An­drews went to re­turn a toi­let seat that she had pur­chased ear­li­er that day.

She was walk­ing to her car af­ter com­plet­ing the trans­ac­tion when she heard bark­ing and foot­steps. She was sur­round­ed by three dogs, one with a col­lar and the two oth­ers with­out. One of the dogs bit her on her knee, and all three at­tacked her as she fell to the ground. The at­tack on­ly end­ed when a neigh­bour and An­drews’ hus­band, who was in the car, in­ter­vened and chased the dogs away.

She claimed that be­fore she was tak­en for med­ical treat­ment, Ram­lo­gan ap­proached her, iden­ti­fied him­self as the own­er of the dogs, and of­fered as­sis­tance. An­drews, through her lawyers Lemuel and Stacey Mur­phy, filed the case against Ram­lo­gan as she claimed that neigh­bours in­formed her that the dogs had es­caped from his com­pound and at­tacked res­i­dents in the past. She claimed that he was neg­li­gent in fail­ing to se­cure the dogs to pre­vent such at­tacks.

Ram­lo­gan de­nied any li­a­bil­i­ty as he claimed that the dogs were not his and were strays in the com­mu­ni­ty. He al­so claimed that she was stand­ing out­side his premis­es when she was at­tacked. In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Mo­hammed ruled that she be­lieved An­drews’ ver­sion of the event as op­posed to Ram­lo­gan’s.

She ques­tioned why Ram­lo­gan did not bring his wife, who was present, as a wit­ness to but­tress his claims. “I am en­ti­tled to draw the ad­verse in­fer­ence that he did not call her as a wit­ness as it was more prob­a­ble that her ev­i­dence would have sup­port­ed the claimant’s po­si­tion,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

She al­so point­ed out that he failed to sup­ply CCTV footage of the in­ci­dent. “The de­fen­dant’s fail­ure to pro­duce the record­ing from the se­cu­ri­ty cam­era with­out any ex­pla­na­tion en­ti­tled me to draw the ad­verse in­fer­ence that he did not pro­duce it as he was aware that it did not sup­port his ver­sion but in­stead sup­port­ed the claimant’s ver­sion that she was stand­ing on his premis­es at the time of the in­ci­dent,” she said.

Deal­ing with Ram­lo­gan’s claim that the dogs were not his, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that An­drews and her hus­band both tes­ti­fied that he (Ram­lo­gan) called one of the dogs by name. She al­so said that he could have brought his neigh­bours to con­firm that they (the dogs) were strays.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed or­dered Ram­lo­gan to pay $3,732.18, which rep­re­sents her med­ical bills. She al­so or­dered $30,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages for An­drews. Ram­lo­gan was al­so or­dered to pay $9,933.05 in le­gal costs. An­drews was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Lloyd Robin­son. Ram­lo­gan was rep­re­sent­ed by Kris­ten Ban­sraj and Richard Sir­joo.

—Derek Achong