Derek Achong

Can a po­lice of­fi­cer charge a dri­ver via sum­mons for tick­etable traf­fic of­fences be­cause the of­fi­cer does not have a tick­et book in his pos­ses­sion at the time?

This is a ques­tion which the Court of Ap­peal has been asked to an­swer in an on­go­ing ap­peal be­tween the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and dri­ver Lisa Pa­tri­cia Brown, who was sub­ject­ed to such a process. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Brown was stopped by a po­lice of­fi­cer in Aranguez on Sep­tem­ber 28, 2013, af­ter she was al­leged­ly caught on her cell­phone while dri­ving.

The po­lice of­fi­cer did not is­sue a fixed penal­ty tick­et when he stopped Brown as he did not have a tick­et book be­cause of a short­age at the po­lice sta­tion he was as­signed to. 

Al­most a week lat­er is­sued her with two sum­mons to ap­pear in court to an­swer charges for us­ing her cell­phone while dri­ving and for ob­struct­ing traf­fic by dri­ving too slow­ly. 

Brown filed a law­suit, in which she claimed that the process used breached her con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to equal­i­ty of treat­ment and pro­tec­tion of the law. 

In the case, Brown’s lawyer David Ra­jku­mar claimed that if she had been is­sued with the tick­et, she could have paid it, whether she was guilty or not, to avoid a court ap­pear­ance. 

He al­so claimed that be­cause his client was charged for the of­fence, she faced po­ten­tial penal­ties of $1,500 and $3,000 fines for the of­fences as op­posed to fines of $1,000 and $800, if she got the tick­ets and did not con­test them. 

In Ju­ly 2017, Brown’s law­suit was up­held by High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran, who ruled that she should not have been put in a dis­ad­van­ta­geous po­si­tion or pun­ished due to the ef­fi­cien­cy of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and by ex­ten­sion the State. 

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on be­half of the AG’s Of­fice be­fore Ap­pel­late Judges Nolan Bereaux, Mark Mo­hammed and Vasheist Kokaram, yes­ter­day morn­ing, at­tor­ney Rachel Thurab claimed that Brown’s rights were not breached. 

She sub­mit­ted that while the sum­mons process could re­sult in a mag­is­trate record­ing a con­vic­tion against an er­rant dri­ver, there was no ev­i­dence of such oc­cur­ring for mi­nor traf­fic of­fences. 

She not­ed that there are pro­vi­sions for po­lice of­fi­cers to charge the own­er of a ve­hi­cle via sum­mons when the dri­ver can not be lo­cat­ed, but ad­mit­ted that such a process is used af­ter an ini­tial tick­et is af­fixed to the ve­hi­cle. 

Ques­tioned by Bereaux over whether he and his col­leagues could or­der the tick­ets to be is­sued to cor­rect the is­sue, both Ra­jku­mar and Thurab agreed that such a course was not pos­si­ble as on­ly de­clara­to­ry re­lief as or­dered by Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran was pos­si­ble.

Jus­tice Bereaux al­so sug­gest­ed that com­pen­sa­tion for the breach, as or­dered by the High Court, was in­ap­pro­pri­ate as Brown may have been guilty of both of­fences. 

“What does it mean if we or­der com­pen­sa­tion when there may have been a breach of the law here. This kind of re­sult may scan­dalise the law,” Bereaux said. 

Ra­jku­mar claimed that while Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran may have or­dered com­pen­sa­tion, such is yet to be as­sessed by a High Court Mas­ter, who can still de­cide against it. 

Af­ter hear­ing the sub­mis­sions from both par­ties, the ap­peal pan­el re­served its judge­ment in the case to a date to be fixed. 

“These were very in­ter­est­ing sub­mis­sions. There is a lot for us to di­gest and think about, so we did not want to fix a date,” Bereaux said.