The Court of Ap­peal has in­creased the com­pen­sa­tion to be paid to the moth­er of a man who died due to the fail­ure of doc­tors at the Princes Town Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty to di­ag­nose that he was suf­fer­ing from a “flesh-eat­ing” dis­ease.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment late last week, Ap­pel­late Judges Nolan Bereaux, Mark Mo­hammed, and Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar up­held Bhawan­tee Singh-Weekes’ ap­peal over the com­pen­sa­tion the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) was or­dered to pay for her son’s death.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, on Oc­to­ber 25, 2014, Singh-Weekes’ 30-year-old son Navin Singh went to the fa­cil­i­ty com­plain­ing of se­vere pain in his right leg.

Singh was di­ag­nosed with sci­at­i­ca—se­vere pain ra­di­at­ing from the back in­to the hip and out­er side of the leg caused by com­pres­sion of the sci­at­ic nerve.

De­spite re­ceiv­ing treat­ment at the fa­cil­i­ty, Singh was forced to re­turn two days lat­er as the pain he was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing wors­ened.

Al­though his low­er limb was swollen and be­gan to dark­en, Singh was di­ag­nosed with the same con­di­tion and dis­charged.

Two days lat­er, he was rushed to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal as he had a high fever and was vom­it­ing.

Doc­tors at the hos­pi­tal even­tu­al­ly di­ag­nosed him with necro­tiz­ing fasci­itis—a bac­te­r­i­al in­fec­tion that re­sults in the death of soft tis­sue.

De­spite re­ceiv­ing treat­ment and un­der­go­ing emer­gency surgery, Singh died the fol­low­ing day.

In No­vem­ber 2020, for­mer High Court Judge and cur­rent Ap­pel­late Judge Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er up­held a med­ical neg­li­gence claim brought by Singh-Weekes.

Jus­tice Dean-Ar­mor­er or­dered $35,000 in dam­ages for the pain and suf­fer­ing Singh en­dured be­fore he even­tu­al­ly died as well as $25,000 for loss of ex­pectan­cy of life.

The SWRHA was al­so or­dered to pay al­most $55,000 in dam­ages to cov­er Singh’s fu­ner­al ex­pens­es.

The most sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion or­dered by Jus­tice Dean-Ar­mor­er was $1,550,068.79 for Singh’s loss of earn­ings as a welder. She al­so or­dered the SWRHA to pay Singh-Weekes $142,216.73 in le­gal costs.

In the ap­peal, Singh-Weekes’ lawyers chal­lenged that the le­gal costs award­ed did not in­clude Val­ue Added Tax (VAT). They al­so chal­lenged the fail­ure of the judge to or­der the SWRHA to cov­er the costs of her ex­pert wit­ness in the case.

The SWRHA filed a cross-ap­peal in which it chal­lenged the com­pen­sa­tion for Singh’s loss of earn­ings.

It con­tend­ed that the judge did not con­sid­er how his earn­ing ca­pac­i­ty would be af­fect­ed had its staff not been neg­li­gent and his leg was am­pu­tat­ed due to the dis­ease.

In con­sid­er­ing the arith­metic used by the judge to cal­cu­late the dam­ages, the ap­peal pan­el not­ed she made an er­ror when de­ter­min­ing his an­nu­al salary be­fore his death.

Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar, who wrote the judg­ment, stat­ed that the judge mul­ti­plied his week­ly salary by four and then 12 mean­ing that the an­nu­al fig­ure was for 48 weeks in­stead of 52 weeks.

He ruled that Singh-Weekes should have re­ceived an ad­di­tion­al $90,431.11 based on the er­ror.

Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar al­so re­ject­ed the SWRHA’s claim that the com­pen­sa­tion for loss of earn­ings should have been halved as Singh’s leg would have had to be am­pu­tat­ed even if he was prop­er­ly di­ag­nosed when he first went to the fa­cil­i­ty.

Singh-Weekes was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Jared Ja­groo, and Che Din­di­al, while Vi­jay De­onar­ine rep­re­sent­ed the SWRHA.

—Derek Achong