Derek Achong

The state has been or­dered to pay al­most $300,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED) guard who was in­jured while par­tic­i­pat­ing in an in­tense train­ing ex­er­cise af­ter un­der­go­ing surgery for kid­ney stones.

Jus­tice Ricky Rahim or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for Bis­ram Chirkoot, of Long­denville, as he up­held his neg­li­gence law­suit against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on Wednes­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, in late 2017, Chirkoot was di­ag­nosed with kid­ney stones and un­der­went surgery. In April 2018, he was in­struct­ed to par­tic­i­pate in a manda­to­ry train­ing ex­er­cise.

Al­though he in­di­cat­ed that he was still re­cov­er­ing from the surgery, Chirkoot still par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ex­er­cise which in­volved “frog-hop­ping” across a court­yard at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza in Port-of-Spain. Chirkoot re­port­ed­ly ex­pe­ri­enced ex­cru­ci­at­ing pain in his low­er back in the re­gion of his kid­ney while do­ing the ex­er­cise.

He claimed that he told the in­struc­tor of the pain he was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, but he was told that he had to con­tin­ue or his pro­mo­tion prospects would be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed.

Chirkoot vis­it­ed sev­er­al spe­cial­ist doc­tors as the un­bear­able pain per­sist­ed af­ter com­plet­ing the ex­er­cise. In late 2018, he was di­ag­nosed with spinal steno­sis and un­der­went surgery.

In 2019, the comp­trol­ler re­quest­ed that he pro­vide a med­ical re­port stat­ing that he could con­tin­ue to par­tic­i­pate in the in­tense phys­i­cal train­ing re­quired for the po­si­tion.

Chirkoot’s lawyers, led by Ganesh Sa­roop of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, not­ed that their client was deeply con­cerned by the cor­re­spon­dence, as such train­ing was not list­ed in the job de­scrip­tion for the po­si­tion he held.

They claimed that as a re­sult of the in­jury, he was un­able to grad­u­ate from the train­ing pro­gramme.

They sug­gest­ed that their client should have been treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly af­ter dis­clos­ing his con­di­tion pri­or to the train­ing.

In de­fence of the case, the AG’s Of­fice de­nied any wrong­do­ing.

It claimed that Chirkoot was not man­dat­ed to par­tic­i­pate and did so will­ing­ly.

It al­so con­tend­ed that af­ter re­veal­ing his med­ical con­di­tion to in­struc­tors, he was al­lowed to sit out tasks that could po­ten­tial­ly ex­ac­er­bate his con­di­tion and chose to per­form some he claimed that he was com­fort­able with.

In up­hold­ing the case, Jus­tice Rahim or­dered $200,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages and $26,230.36 in spe­cial dam­ages, which was based on the med­ical fees that were not cov­ered by his in­sur­ance.

Jus­tice Rahim found that Chirkoot would have re­ceived 20 per cent more com­pen­sa­tion but ap­plied a re­duc­tion based on his find­ing that Chirkoot par­tial­ly con­tributed to his in­jury.

He al­so or­dered $20,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages and or­dered the state to pay Chirkoot’s le­gal costs for the law­suit.

Chirkoot was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Robert Ab­dool-Mitchell, while Shali­ni Singh and Vic­tor Jar­dine rep­re­sent­ed the AG’s Of­fice. —Derek Achong