Derek Achong

The State is set to pay com­pen­sa­tion to a fe­male fire of­fi­cer who was al­leged­ly in­jured while test­ing a wood­en lad­der in 2024.

De­liv­er­ing her de­ci­sion yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Joan Charles grant­ed a de­fault judg­ment in favour of Melanie Valen­tine af­ter the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al failed to meet dead­lines for fil­ing a de­fence to her law­suit.

Jus­tice Charles ruled that the AG’s Of­fice had not jus­ti­fied its re­quest for a fur­ther ex­ten­sion or re­lief from the sanc­tion.

“While I not­ed that it was in­cum­bent for this court to con­sid­er the un­avoid­able ad­min­is­tra­tive and pro­ce­dur­al hur­dles faced by the de­fen­dant, which would in­evitably lead to some mea­sure of de­lay, this court could not ac­cept the seem­ing­ly in­def­i­nite na­ture of the de­fen­dant’s ap­pli­ca­tion,” she said.

“To grant a fur­ther ex­ten­sion in this vein would lead to un­jus­ti­fi­able de­lay and would be un­fair to the claimant,” she added.

Al­though Valen­tine’s case was de­cid­ed with­out a tri­al, Jus­tice Charles did not or­der the com­pen­sa­tion to be paid im­me­di­ate­ly. The amount will be as­sessed lat­er by a High Court Mas­ter.

In court fil­ings, Valen­tine’s lawyer, Richard Jag­gasar, stat­ed that his client, who was last as­signed to Fire Ser­vice Head­quar­ters at Wright­son Road , Port-of-Spain, sus­tained an in­jury to her fore­arm while test­ing a lad­der on Jan­u­ary 10, 2024.

“The of­fi­cer in charge stat­ed that the lad­der was de­fec­tive and now pawl­ing; how­ev­er, the claimant was in­struct­ed to use the lad­der any­way,” Jag­gasar said.

“While con­duct­ing checks on the lad­der, the ex­tend­ing sec­tion slipped and slammed on­to her right wrist and both fore­arms,” he added.

Valen­tine was placed on sick leave and was re­quired to re­turn to work on Feb­ru­ary 5, de­spite not hav­ing ful­ly re­cov­ered. Jag­gasar said her in­jury was wors­ened as she was as­signed sen­try du­ty, which re­quired her to pre­pare writ­ten re­ports.

On March 4, Valen­tine vis­it­ed a doc­tor spe­cial­is­ing in sports med­i­cine and in­juries, and was di­ag­nosed with neu­ro­prax­ia of the right ra­di­al nerve in her fore­arm. She was ini­tial­ly grant­ed 28 days of sick leave, which was lat­er ex­tend­ed.

Through the law­suit, Valen­tine sought com­pen­sa­tion for her in­jury and on­go­ing med­ical ex­pens­es, as well as a de­c­la­ra­tion that the State breached its statu­to­ry du­ty un­der the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act (OSH Act).