The Privy Coun­cil has re­served its de­ci­sion on a land­mark fi­nal ap­peal over the time lim­it for the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Au­thor­i­ty and Agency (OSH Au­thor­i­ty) to ini­ti­ate pros­e­cu­tions for health and safe­ty of­fences.

Five Law Lords re­served their judg­ment af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions at the Unit­ed King­dom Supreme Court Build­ing in Lon­don, Eng­land, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The out­come of the case is high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed as it would have a di­rect ef­fect on on­go­ing pros­e­cu­tions pur­sued by the au­thor­i­ty in­clud­ing a se­ries of par­al­lel pros­e­cu­tions be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court and Mag­is­trate’s Court re­lat­ed to a div­ing tragedy at Paria’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty in 2022, which claimed the lives of four divers.

The ap­peal be­tween the au­thor­i­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) re­lates to a com­plaint made by the au­thor­i­ty over UWI’s al­leged de­lay in in­form­ing it of an in­ci­dent in which an em­ploy­ee was in­jured by a cow in March 2016.

Af­ter the com­plaint was filed be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court in No­vem­ber 2017, UWI ob­ject­ed as its at­tor­ney re­ferred to sec­tion 93 of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Act (OS­HA), which re­quires a com­plaint to be filed with­in six months of the is­sue com­ing to the at­ten­tion of the au­thor­i­ty.

The au­thor­i­ty point­ed to Sec­tion 97(B) of the leg­is­la­tion, which states that all pro­ceed­ings un­der it (the Act) should be ini­ti­at­ed no more than two years af­ter the cause of ac­tion arose.

The In­dus­tri­al Court up­held the au­thor­i­ty’s po­si­tion as it ruled that the two-year time lim­it ap­plied to pros­e­cu­tions be­fore it and the six-month lim­it on­ly ap­plied to sim­i­lar but sep­a­rate health and safe­ty of­fences pur­sued be­fore mag­is­trates.

UWI ap­pealed the de­ci­sion and suc­ceed­ed be­fore the Court of Ap­peal.

The Ap­peal Court re­versed the de­ci­sion as it found that the six-month lim­it ap­plied to pros­e­cu­tions be­fore mag­is­trates and the In­dus­tri­al Court. It al­so ruled that the two-year lim­it on­ly ap­plied to civ­il law­suits brought un­der the leg­is­la­tion.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions, yes­ter­day, British bar­ris­ter Robert Strang, who rep­re­sent­ed the au­thor­i­ty, not­ed that his client was sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed by the dif­fer­ence of opin­ion on the time lim­it.

“The au­thor­i­ty sched­uled its in­ves­ti­ga­tions and pros­e­cu­tions based on the two-year lim­it,” Strang said, as he called on the Board to side with the In­dus­tri­al Court’s po­si­tion.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, UWI’s lawyer David Alexan­der said that the Ap­peal Court’s rul­ing could not be fault­ed as it con­duct­ed a thor­ough in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the leg­isla­tive pro­vi­sions.

“There should be no dif­fi­cul­ty with words in those pro­vi­sions...The plain mean­ing of the words is clear,” Alexan­der said.

He not­ed that the six-month time lim­it was con­sis­tent with the time lim­it set un­der the Sum­ma­ry Courts Act, which gov­erns sum­ma­ry pros­e­cu­tions be­fore mag­is­trates.