Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A busi­ness­man has won his law­suit against Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd over a US$30,000 cred­it card re­bate for ex­pens­es in­curred dur­ing a med­ical emer­gency abroad.

De­liv­er­ing judg­ment on Tues­day, High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed up­held the claim brought by Ger­ald Sir­joo.

In May 2018, Sir­joo, who holds a VISA In­ter­na­tion­al Sig­na­ture Card is­sued by the bank, trav­elled to the Unit­ed States, where he suf­fered a med­ical emer­gency re­quir­ing neu­ro­surgery. He paid the US$58,424.80 med­ical bill us­ing the card.

Up­on re­turn­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Sir­joo sub­mit­ted a claim for re­im­burse­ment, based on a ben­e­fit he was in­formed of when he re­ceived the card in 2011. His claim to the VISA Sig­na­ture As­sis­tance Cen­tre was de­nied on the grounds that he had not sub­mit­ted the re­quired sup­port­ing doc­u­ments with­in 90 days.

Through his lawyer Lar­ry Lal­la, Sir­joo filed suit against Re­pub­lic Bank for fail­ing to as­sist and ho­n­our his claim.

The bank, in its de­fence, de­nied wrong­do­ing, ar­gu­ing that the med­ical ben­e­fits were of­fered by VISA, the glob­al pay­ment tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, and not the bank it­self. It al­so cit­ed a clause in the cred­it card agree­ment stat­ing that it could not be held li­able for fail­ing to per­form oblig­a­tions due to sys­tem fail­ures or events out­side its con­trol.

In his rul­ing, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that the brochure shown to Sir­joo be­fore he signed up for the card in­clud­ed the ben­e­fit he sought.

“A rea­son­able per­son, see­ing the de­fen­dant’s lo­go on the ap­pli­ca­tion form and the brochure, would be­lieve that the de­fen­dant is of­fer­ing such cov­er­age,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

He con­clud­ed that the bank’s mar­ket­ing of the ben­e­fit made it a con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed al­so ruled that the clause lim­it­ing the bank’s li­a­bil­i­ty was void un­der the Un­fair Con­tract Terms Act, call­ing it “un­cer­tain and there­fore un­rea­son­able.”

The judge found that Sir­joo met the con­di­tions to claim the ben­e­fit: he pur­chased his trav­el tick­et us­ing the card, and the med­ical treat­ment was not for a pre-ex­ist­ing con­di­tion di­ag­nosed with­in three months of the trip. In fact, the con­di­tion was di­ag­nosed more than 90 days pri­or.

“It has not been proven by the de­fen­dant that the flare-up did not oc­cur pri­or to the trip or wors­en, or that he had planned to trav­el specif­i­cal­ly for his med­ical prob­lem,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

He al­so not­ed that Sir­joo’s claim was de­nied not due to fail­ure to meet con­di­tions, but be­cause of al­leged de­lays in sub­mit­ting doc­u­men­ta­tion. Sir­joo had at­tempt­ed to com­ply with the 90-day re­quire­ment but was forced to re­sub­mit doc­u­ments mul­ti­ple times due to is­sues raised by VISA’s ser­vice provider, AXA As­sis­tance.

“This is seen as a tech­ni­cal­i­ty which AXA then used to ‘run out of time’ the claimant’s ap­pli­ca­tion,” the judge said.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed or­dered Re­pub­lic Bank to pay Sir­joo the US$30,000 re­bate, plus in­ter­est and le­gal costs.

The bank was rep­re­sent­ed by Michael Quam­i­na and Mar­celle Fer­di­nand.