Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Al­most three years af­ter a ma­jor div­ing tragedy at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty, lawyers for sur­vivor Christo­pher Boodram and rel­a­tives of Rishi Na­gas­sar have filed neg­li­gence law­suits against the State-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny and their for­mer em­ploy­er, Paria and Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (LM­CS). 

On Oc­to­ber 14, a team of at­tor­neys from Free­dom Law Cham­bers led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan, filed the cas­es over what tran­spired in Feb­ru­ary 2022. They iden­ti­fied 29 grounds on which they claimed Paria’s neg­li­gence led to the fa­tal in­ci­dent and al­so raised 25 grounds in re­la­tion to LM­CS as their em­ploy­er. 

They are seek­ing sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion for Na­gas­sar’s death and Boodram’s long-last­ing phys­i­cal and men­tal in­juries, which will be large­ly based on what they en­dured in the in­ci­dent and their lack of earn­ings since then. 

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, at­tor­ney Prakash Ramd­har, who is lead­ing the le­gal team for the fam­i­lies of two of the oth­er divers, Fyzal Kur­ban and Yusuf Hen­ry, said sim­i­lar cas­es will be soon filed. 

He said he at­tempt­ed to set­tle the cas­es with Paria and avoid lit­i­ga­tion but dis­cus­sions with the com­pa­ny proved fu­tile. 

“They took a de­ci­sion that they were not go­ing to be rea­son­able and fair in all of the cir­cum­stances so we were left with no choice but to pro­ceed to file ac­tions,” Ra­mad­har said. 

In their state­ment of case, the lawyers gave a syn­op­sis of the in­ci­dent as re­count­ed by Boodram. 

On Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, Boodram, Na­gas­sar, Hen­ry, Kur­ban, and Kaz­im Ali Ju­nior, whose fa­ther is a di­rec­tor of LM­CS, were do­ing main­te­nance work on an un­der­wa­ter off­shore pipeline off Berth #6 on Paria’s com­pound when the in­ci­dent oc­curred. 

They said the group were per­form­ing work fol­low­ing the scope of works is­sued by Paria and the project ex­e­cu­tion plan de­vel­oped by LM­CS when the hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber flood­ed and they were sucked in. 

Al­though the men were in­jured, they man­aged to find each oth­er in an air pock­et. When the men reached the end of the air pock­et, Boodram went ahead through a mix­ture of crude oil and wa­ter and met a chain block hang­ing near the end of the pipe.  

They claimed that just as Boodram was about to give up hope, he heard a re­sponse from some­one out­side. He was even­tu­al­ly pulled out of the pipe by his col­league Ronald Ra­moutar, who he lat­er learned had been warned by Paria of­fi­cials against in­ter­ven­ing. 

Be­fore be­ing tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Boodram re­port­ed­ly told of­fi­cials of the con­di­tion of his col­leagues and plead­ed with them to res­cue them. The men were not res­cued and their bod­ies were re­cov­ered days lat­er. 

Sum­maris­ing the neg­li­gence claims against the com­pa­nies, the lawyers claimed they failed to iden­ti­fy the po­ten­tial haz­ards as­so­ci­at­ed with the job and im­ple­ment mea­sures to en­sure an ef­fec­tive emer­gency re­sponse. 

The lawyers al­leged that Paria failed to en­sure that LM­CS had prop­er health and safe­ty equip­ment for their staff and could safe­ly and com­pe­tent­ly com­plete the job. They fur­ther claimed that Paria and LM­CS failed to prop­er­ly clear the pipeline be­fore the divers were al­lowed to com­mence work. 

“Fail­ure, in all cir­cum­stances, to ad­here to in­dus­try safe­ty stan­dards by tak­ing steps to en­sure the safe­ty of the Claimant and oth­er work­ers,” they said.

They al­so crit­i­cised Paria for pre­vent­ing a res­cue op­er­a­tion and quot­ed some of the find­ings of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) ap­point­ed by the gov­ern­ment to probe the in­ci­dent fol­low­ing pub­lic furore over the tragedy. 

O the loss and dam­age suf­fered by Boodram, his lawyers claimed he still suf­fers men­tal an­guish and “con­tin­ues to be haunt­ed by the mem­o­ries of his friends’ suf­fer­ing and the in­abil­i­ty to help them de­spite promis­ing them that he will get as­sis­tance.”

They said he has been un­able to re­turn to work as he suf­fers from post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der (PTSD). 

“The haunt­ing mem­o­ries of the in­ci­dent, cou­pled with the on­go­ing emo­tion­al dis­tress, make it chal­leng­ing for him to con­cen­trate, en­gage with col­leagues, or func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly in a work en­vi­ron­ment at present, and for the fore­see­able fu­ture,” they said. 

They claimed that Boodram has suf­fered from neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­or­ders, in­clud­ing am­ne­sia, since the in­ci­dent. 

“He fre­quent­ly mis­places items and for­gets his sched­uled med­ical ap­point­ments for ex­am­ple,” they said, adding that he al­so suf­fers from lin­guis­tic dif­fi­cul­ties.

“He re­lives the night­mare on a dai­ly ba­sis and is un­able to get a good night’s sleep.”

They claimed that he lost out on more than $400,000 in in­come since the in­ci­dent as he pre­vi­ous­ly worked on a free­lance ba­sis with oth­er dive com­pa­nies and as a fish­er­man in his free time. 

Boodram’s lawyers al­so claimed that he will re­quire week­ly ther­a­peu­tic sup­port for the next decade and the med­ical bills will be ap­prox­i­mate­ly $312,000. 

Na­gas­sar’s lawyers are claim­ing com­pen­sa­tion for the pain and suf­fer­ing he en­dured, $25,000 for loss of ex­pec­ta­tion of life and loss of earn­ings for the 46-year-old based on the $9,800 month­ly salary he re­ceived from LM­CS as well as pri­vate work. 

They are al­so seek­ing $53,350, which rep­re­sents the mon­ey ex­pend­ed by his fam­i­ly for his fu­ner­al. 

Na­gas­sar was the sole bread­win­ner in his fam­i­ly and his lawyers are claim­ing com­pen­sa­tion for his com­mon-law wife and five-year-old daugh­ter es­ti­mat­ed at an an­nu­al rate of $85,000 un­til he would have re­tired.

The duo is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Kent Sam­lal, Robert Ab­dool-Mitchell, Sue Ann De­osaran, and Natasha Bis­ram. 

Af­ter the tragedy, the Cab­i­net ini­tial­ly ap­point­ed a five-mem­ber team to in­ves­ti­gate but the move was scrapped due to pub­lic crit­i­cism and a CoE was ap­point­ed. 

In its re­port, the com­mis­sion chaired by King’s Coun­sel Jerome Lynch pre­sent­ed sev­er­al dozen rec­om­men­da­tions, in­clud­ing oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health charges. 

It al­so rec­om­mend­ed that Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, con­sid­er pros­e­cut­ing Paria for gross neg­li­gence manslaugh­ter. 

In Ju­ly, DPP Gas­pard wrote to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to ini­ti­ate an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine whether there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to pros­e­cute any per­son or en­ti­ty. 

Around the same time, Paria is­sued a re­lease claim­ing that the LM­CS and the le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies were frus­trat­ing its at­tempts to set­tle com­pen­sa­tion claims. 

Ra­mad­har de­nied the claims and called on Paria to pay each of the men’s fam­i­lies $5 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion. 

Last month, LM­CS’s le­gal team wrote to Ra­mad­har and Ram­lo­gan sug­gest­ing they di­rect their le­gal ac­tion to Paria and not their client. The com­pa­ny’s lawyers dis­missed any im­pu­ta­tion of cul­pa­bil­i­ty at­tached to it by the com­mis­sion and claimed Paria should be held sole­ly li­able for what tran­spired. 

They sug­gest­ed that even if their clients were par­tial­ly re­spon­si­ble for the ini­tial ac­ci­dent as al­leged, Paria’s han­dling of the re­sponse ab­solved it. 

Af­ter be­ing served with pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters threat­en­ing the law­suits, Paria re­port­ed­ly claimed that on­ly LM­CS should be held li­able. 

LM­CS did ad­mit that they owed their work­ers’ fam­i­lies and Boodram com­pen­sa­tion un­der the Work­men’s Com­pen­sa­tion Act but claimed pay­ments could not be made un­til its claim to its in­sur­er was de­ter­mined. 

The com­pa­ny claimed it pur­sued lit­i­ga­tion when it made a claim short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent but did not re­ceive a re­sponse.  

Ear­li­er this year, the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty and Agency (OS­HA) brought 15 charges against the com­pa­nies, Paria’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed, its ter­mi­nal op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Collin Piper and LM­CS di­rec­tor Kaz­im Ali Snr. 

Mo­hammed is fac­ing four charges for fa­cil­i­tat­ing a breach of the OSH Act by fail­ing to pre­pare an emer­gency plan based on a risk as­sess­ment and by fail­ing to en­sure the divers were not ex­posed to a safe­ty risk. 

Paria is charged with four of­fences for fail­ing to en­sure that the divers were not ex­posed to risk, for fail­ing to im­ple­ment an emer­gency plan based on a risk as­sess­ment, for fail­ing to re­vise the emer­gency plan through con­sul­ta­tion with work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives and fail­ing to con­duct an an­nu­al as­sess­ment of the po­ten­tial risks to em­ploy­ees of third par­ty con­trac­tors such as the divers. 

Piper is ac­cused of al­leged­ly fail­ing to en­sure that em­ploy­ees of the third-par­ty con­trac­tors were not ex­posed to health and safe­ty risks. 

Ali is fac­ing three charges for ne­glect­ing to en­sure the health, safe­ty and wel­fare of his em­ploy­ees, fail­ing to per­form an­nu­al risk as­sess­ments and ne­glect­ing to pro­vide train­ing, in­struc­tions and su­per­vi­sion to en­sure the safe­ty of the work­ers. 

His com­pa­ny was charged with fail­ing to per­form a risk as­sess­ment, fail­ing to en­sure its work­ers’ safe­ty, and fail­ing to pro­vide them with prop­er train­ing and su­per­vi­sion. 

The three of­fi­cials and the two com­pa­nies de­nied any wrong­do­ing when they reap­peared in court last month. 

The out­come of the charges might be af­fect­ed by a land­mark case over the lay­ing of charges un­der the OSH Act which is cur­rent­ly be­ing con­sid­ered by the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil. 

In that case, a de­ci­sion by the Court of Ap­peal over the time lim­it for bring­ing charges un­der the leg­is­la­tion is be­ing chal­lenged. The Ap­peal Court ruled that health and safe­ty charges and crim­i­nal charges had to be filed six months af­ter the con­duct oc­curred, while civ­il claims could be brought with­in two years.