Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) was yes­ter­day forced to aban­don his ap­peal over the dis­missal of his law­suit in which he chal­lenged be­ing made re­dun­dant in 2018, with 14 months left on his con­tract.

Dr Ra­bindranath Ram­sa­roop with­drew his ap­peal af­ter his lawyer pre­sent­ed sub­mis­sions be­fore Ap­pel­late Judges Char­maine Pem­ber­ton, Gillian Lucky, and Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre yes­ter­day morn­ing. The de­ci­sion came as the ap­peal pan­el grilled Dr Ram­sa­roop’s lawyer, Glen Bhag­wans­ingh, over the va­lid­i­ty of the le­gal chal­lenge.

In the ap­peal, Dr Ram­sa­roop con­tend­ed that High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad was wrong to have re­ject­ed his breach of con­tract/un­fair dis­missal law­suit in April 2022.

In Ju­ly 2006, Ram­sa­roop, who holds a PhD in En­gi­neer­ing, was hired on a three-year con­tract by the state-fund­ed ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion to hold the post of Se­nior In­struc­tor for De­sign and Man­u­fac­tur­ing Sys­tems.

Ram­sa­roop re­ceived sev­er­al con­tract ex­ten­sions, the last of which came in Sep­tem­ber 2016.

How­ev­er, in May 2018, UTT in­formed him that it would be ter­mi­nat­ing his con­tract due to re­dun­dan­cy.

UTT paid Ram­sa­roop $150,535.20, which rep­re­sent­ed one month’s salary and ben­e­fits as well as sev­er­ance pay.

Ram­sa­roop then filed the law­suit, seek­ing $327,676.75 in com­pen­sa­tion, which rep­re­sent­ed the full salary and ben­e­fits he would have re­ceived if his con­tract had not been pre­ma­ture­ly ter­mi­nat­ed.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad was asked to de­ter­mine whether UTT could have ter­mi­nat­ed the con­tract based on a clause which al­lowed for such in cir­cum­stances where there were un­fore­seen changes in the uni­ver­si­ty’s op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments.

In dis­miss­ing the case, Seep­er­sad not­ed that when Ram­sa­roop was first hired, UTT did not have fund­ing is­sues that arose when he was even­tu­al­ly deemed re­dun­dant.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions yes­ter­day, Bhag­wans­ingh claimed that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad wrong­ly up­held the clause, as he main­tained that there was no change in UTT’s op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments at the time. The judges chal­lenged the ba­sis for Bhag­wans­ingh’s claim.

“Did UTT re­al­ly know they were go­ing to suf­fer a bud­get cut? If you’re say­ing they knew, where is your ev­i­dence?” Dean-Ar­mor­er said. The judges al­so point­ed out that the ap­peal sought to raise le­gal is­sues that were not can­vassed be­fore Jus­tice Seep­er­sad. They al­so not­ed that he could not com­plain about the in­abil­i­ty to cross-ex­am­ine wit­ness­es based on the plead­ings.

“You have to stick to your plead­ed case. Since it was not plead­ed, the tri­al judge did not al­low it,” Jus­tice Pem­ber­ton said.

The ap­peal pan­el sug­gest­ed that the ap­peal should not have been pur­sued.

“This is not a case where your client got noth­ing or not any­thing sub­stan­tial,” Jus­tice Lucky said, as she not­ed that Ram­sa­roop could have sought a new job based on his qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence.

The ap­peal pan­el not­ed that chal­lenges be­fore them should on­ly be pur­sued if there is a valid le­gal ba­sis. “We are not here to retry or as­suage feel­ings when you do not like what the tri­al judge said. That is not our role,” Jus­tice Pem­ber­ton said.