Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

High Court Judge Ricky Rahim has been el­e­vat­ed to the Court of Ap­peal.

Jus­tice Rahim’s pro­mo­tion was con­firmed as he re­ceived his in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment from Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent yes­ter­day morn­ing.

It came al­most two months be­fore Jus­tice Rahim was set to cel­e­brate his 15th an­niver­sary of join­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry.

Jus­tice Rahim, a grad­u­ate of the Hugh Wood­ing Law School, was called to the bar in 1994.

He served as a state coun­sel with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) be­fore leav­ing to en­ter pri­vate prac­tice.

Jus­tice Rahim, a found­ing mem­ber of Al­pha Law Cham­bers, had a di­verse le­gal prac­tice spe­cial­is­ing in civ­il, crim­i­nal and fam­i­ly law.

Be­fore join­ing the bench in Oc­to­ber 2010, Jus­tice Rahim re­turned to the law school where he served as course di­rec­tor and tu­tor in sev­er­al sub­jects, in­clud­ing tri­al ad­vo­ca­cy, ev­i­dence, and crim­i­nal prac­tice and pro­ce­dure.

His role in the school con­tin­ued af­ter he be­came a judge, as he served as an as­so­ciate tu­tor in civ­il pro­ce­dure and prac­tice over the past 14 years.

A press re­lease from the Pres­i­dent’s Of­fice stat­ed that Jus­tice Rahim gained vast ex­pe­ri­ence as a judge, as he sat in both the crim­i­nal and civ­il di­vi­sions.

“He has sub­stan­tial ex­pe­ri­ence in the civ­il courts, hav­ing ad­ju­di­cat­ed on com­plex and weighty com­mer­cial dis­putes and land mat­ters,” it said.

“He was Chair­man of the Civ­il Judges Cal­en­der­ing and Case Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee for the last five years and is al­so a trained Ju­di­cial Set­tle­ment Of­fi­cer,” it added.

It al­so not­ed that he was one of two judges who rep­re­sent­ed the Ju­di­cia­ry at a Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime meet­ing in Brazil last year.

He al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in a Caribbean Ju­di­cial Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery Con­fer­ence held by the US De­part­ment of State.

One of Jus­tice Rahim’s last cas­es as a High Court Judge was de­cid­ing a nov­el breach of fidu­cia­ry case brought by the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) against its for­mer board for a failed con­tract re­lat­ed to the con­tro­ver­sial Life­S­port so­cial pro­gramme.

In late Ju­ly, Jus­tice Rahim up­held the case, rul­ing that the for­mer board did not act in the com­pa­ny’s best in­ter­est when it ap­proved the con­tract on the in­struc­tions of of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Sport in De­cem­ber 2012.

While SporTT was seek­ing sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion based on the val­ue of the con­tract, Jus­tice Rahim on­ly or­dered each of the board mem­bers to pay $40,000 in nom­i­nal dam­ages for their breach.

Jus­tice Rahim ruled that SporTT suf­fered a loss as a re­sult of the failed con­tract, but he not­ed that it was dif­fi­cult to quan­ti­fy, as the com­pa­ny did pro­vide some ser­vices. He al­so not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment guar­an­teed and re­paid the loan ob­tained by SporTT for the con­tract.