A Mara­cas/St Joseph man who was al­leged­ly beat­en by an off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer while ar­gu­ing with his moth­er at their home af­ter a par­ty has sued the of­fi­cer and the State. 

An­ton Licor­ish’s as­sault and bat­tery law­suit against PC Jer­von Ramie and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al be­gan be­fore High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

The in­ci­dent oc­curred at the house Licor­ish shared with his par­ents and sis­ter on Ju­ly 11, 2020. 

Ear­li­er that night, Licor­ish and sev­er­al of his friends at­tend­ed a birth­day par­ty at his neigh­bour’s home. Af­ter the par­ty end­ed, Licor­ish, his friends, and Ramie, who was in­vit­ed by one of Licor­ish’s close friends, re­turned to his par­ents’ home. 

Licor­ish’s fa­ther, An­tho­ny, told his son he could not host the lime as they had a guest stay­ing in their an­nexe, which they pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly rent­ed on the in­ter­na­tion­al on­line short rental ser­vice Airbnb. Licor­ish went in­to the kitchen to ap­peal to his moth­er Kather­ine but she re­it­er­at­ed her hus­band’s po­si­tion. 

Licor­ish’s moth­er al­leged­ly raised her hand to hit him af­ter he raised his voice. He grabbed her hand caus­ing the beer bot­tle he was hold­ing to fall and shat­ter. 

Licor­ish claimed Ramie, who was in the oth­er room, in­ter­vened, grabbed him by the neck and shoved him to­wards the glass door, lead­ing from the kitchen to out­side, caus­ing it to shat­ter. Mu­tu­al friends in­ter­vened and sep­a­rat­ed them. 

Licor­ish claimed Ramie went to his car and re­turned with a ba­ton, which he used to hit him sev­er­al times. 

Po­lice of­fi­cers even­tu­al­ly re­spond­ed and Licor­ish was tak­en to hos­pi­tal for med­ical treat­ment. 

In 2021, Licor­ish’s lawyers filed a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) re­quest for the dis­clo­sure of T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) records re­lat­ed to the in­ci­dent af­ter Ramie was not charged. 

In the law­suit, Licor­ish is claim­ing com­pen­sa­tion for the in­juries he suf­fered to his head, arms and legs. He is al­so seek­ing US$286.15, which rep­re­sents the rent his par­ents missed out on af­ter their an­nexe was tem­porar­i­ly de-list­ed from Airbnb based on a com­plaint made by the guest who wit­nessed the al­ter­ca­tion. 

Licor­ish list­ed the AG’s Of­fice as a par­ty to the law­suit as his at­tor­neys claimed that it was vic­ar­i­ous­ly li­able be­cause Ramie iden­ti­fied him­self as a po­lice of­fi­cer as­signed to the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB) be­fore he in­ter­vened in the dis­pute. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Seep­er­sad, Licor­ish and his par­ents tes­ti­fied and were cross-ex­am­ined by Ramie’s lawyer Ger­ard Gray. Licor­ish’s par­ents ad­mit­ted that their son was con­sum­ing al­co­hol be­fore the in­ci­dent but de­nied that he was drunk and act­ing in­co­her­ent­ly. 

“He was un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol but I can’t say he was drunk,” his fa­ther said. 

Both de­nied Gray’s sug­ges­tions that Ramie on­ly in­ter­vened af­ter Licor­ish al­leged­ly held his moth­er in a head­lock and threat­ened her with the bro­ken beer bot­tle. 

Con­front­ed with video footage of a por­tion of the al­ter­ca­tion which was cap­tured by CCTV cam­eras out­side their house, the cou­ple main­tained that it showed Ramie with the weapon at­tack­ing their son, who was at­tempt­ing to de­fend him­self. 

In his ev­i­dence, Licor­ish stat­ed that he did not know Ramie and met him for the first time be­fore the in­ci­dent. 

In de­fence of the case, the AG’s Of­fice is con­tend­ing that it should not be held li­able as Ramie was not on ac­tive du­ty at the time. 

Ramie has al­so de­nied any wrong­do­ing as he claimed he in­ter­vened af­ter Licor­ish be­came vi­o­lent.  He de­nied hit­ting Licor­ish on his head with the ba­ton but ad­mit­ted that he dealt him sev­er­al blows to his hand and back in an at­tempt to in­ca­pac­i­tate him. 

The tri­al is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed to­day. 

Licor­ish was rep­re­sent­ed by Kiev Ches­ney and Chelsea Stew­art-Ches­ney. The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Rachael Ja­cob.