The State has been or­dered to pay al­most $200,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a 56-year-old busi­ness­man from Freeport for wrong­ful ar­rest, false im­pris­on­ment and ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion. 

Al­though the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty in the case a year ago, High Court Judge West­min James on­ly as­sessed the com­pen­sa­tion for busi­ness­man and emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cian Dar­ryl Nan­ton late last week. 

Nan­ton’s case stemmed from an in­ci­dent on April 24, 2018. 

Nan­ton, who worked at Petrotrin at the time and owns Heart­felt Care Ser­vices, went to a pop­u­lar fast food restau­rant in Mara­bel­la to meet an em­ploy­ee.  

Nan­ton at­tempt­ed to turn in­to a car park spot in front of the restau­rant but re­alised that it was par­tial­ly blocked by two mo­tor­cy­cles. 

While Nan­ton was at­tempt­ing to straight­en his ve­hi­cle, he was stopped by a group of po­lice of­fi­cers, who ac­cused him of il­le­gal­ly park­ing on the pave­ment. 

Nan­ton claimed that he hand­ed over his dri­ver’s per­mit but had to call his wife, as he could not im­me­di­ate­ly lo­cate the in­sur­ance cer­tifi­cate for the ve­hi­cle. 

He claimed the of­fi­cers re­peat­ed­ly in­sult­ed him be­fore ar­rest­ing him. 

He was tak­en to the Mara­bel­la Po­lice Sta­tion, where he was even­tu­al­ly charged for be­hav­ing in a dis­or­der­ly man­ner, ob­struct­ing the po­lice of­fi­cers and us­ing in­sult­ing lan­guage to­wards them. 

He claimed that one of the of­fi­cers ad­mit­ted that the charges were fab­ri­cat­ed while he was in cus­tody. 

“I don’t care if I win or lose. Is how long you suf­fer in court,” the of­fi­cer al­leged­ly said. 

Nan­ton made nu­mer­ous court ap­pear­ances be­fore the charges were dis­missed by a mag­is­trate for want of pros­e­cu­tion. 

Nan­ton, through his lawyer Dar­ryl Heer­alal, filed the law­suit, which was ini­tial­ly de­fend­ed by the AG’s Of­fice be­fore it ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty. 

Jus­tice James or­dered $50,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages for false im­pris­on­ment and $50,000 for ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion. He al­so or­dered $40,000 ex­em­plary dam­ages to de­ter such ac­tion by agents of the State in the fu­ture. 

“No doubt there was ar­bi­trary, op­pres­sive, un­rea­son­able and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al ac­tions of the of­fi­cers in this case, in­clud­ing mak­ing up charges, at­ti­tude to­wards the Claimant, the ag­gres­sion used to­wards the Claimant and the over­charg­ing of the Claimant dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the of­fence, which was the breach of a traf­fic reg­u­la­tion,” Jus­tice James said. 

Stat­ing that the of­fi­cers were vin­dic­tive in their con­duct, Jus­tice James said: “In those cir­cum­stances, the ac­tions ought to be con­demned.” 

The State was al­so or­dered to pay Nan­ton $14,000 in spe­cial dam­ages to re­place a cell­phone that was seized and not re­turned to him, and to cov­er his le­gal fees in de­fend­ing the charges. 

It was al­so or­dered to pay $36,301.58, which rep­re­sents the le­gal costs in­curred by Nan­ton in pur­su­ing the law­suit. 

Jus­tice James grant­ed a 28-day stay to give the AG’s Of­fice time to con­sid­er an ap­peal. 

The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Evana Welch and Sara Mus­lim.