Af­ter an al­most decade-long le­gal bat­tle, En­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh and the High­way Reroute Move­ment (HRM) have emerged vic­to­ri­ous against the State over the con­struc­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial Debe to Mon De­sir seg­ment of the Point Fortin High­way project.

De­liv­er­ing a judge­ment dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, High Court Judge James Aboud up­held the group’s claim that their le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion, that the then Gov­ern­ment would abide by a tech­ni­cal re­port on the project pro­duced by for­mer In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr James Arm­strong, was breached. 

The group al­so con­tend­ed that the breach con­tra­vened its mem­bers’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to “life, se­cu­ri­ty, en­joy­ment of prop­er­ty, to free­dom of ex­pres­sion and free­dom of as­so­ci­a­tion”. 

As a sec­ondary is­sue, the group al­so sought and ob­tained a de­c­la­ra­tion that the al­leged ac­tions of for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Jack Warn­er and the T&T Reg­i­ment in de­stroy­ing the Debe protest camp on June 27, 2012, was il­le­gal.

As part of the de­ci­sion, Aboud or­dered the State to pay ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500,000 in dam­ages to the group and the le­gal costs they in­curred for the law­suit. 

Aboud de­liv­ered a sum­ma­ry of his de­ci­sion dur­ing the hear­ing and was ex­pect­ed to is­sue his de­tailed writ­ten de­ci­sion, short­ly af­ter. How­ev­er, the writ­ten judge­ment had not been sent to the par­ties, up to late yes­ter­day. 

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Kublals­ingh said he was hap­py with the judge­ment as it reaf­firmed his faith in the Ju­di­cia­ry. 

He claimed that based on what he had heard dur­ing the hear­ing, Aboud ap­peared “an­gry” over the ac­tions of State of­fi­cials in the case.  

“Our (this coun­try’s) de­vel­op­ment has been politi­cised. We need to do things sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly,” he said, as he thanked his le­gal team. 

De­spite the le­gal vic­to­ry, Kublals­ingh ad­mit­ted that he and his group’s fight is far from over. 

Kublals­ingh not­ed that the group was still chal­leng­ing the out­come of a sep­a­rate law­suit over the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment’s move to restart the project af­ter it stalled due to is­sues with fi­nanc­ing and Brazil­ian con­trac­tor OAS Con­stru­to­ra. 

In a judge­ment, in April, Jus­tice Ricky Rahim ruled that al­though the group had a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion that there would have been con­sul­ta­tion be­fore the restart, the State could not be held li­able for breach­ing it as it was in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est to do so. 

Rahim said: “There is a high pub­lic in­ter­est com­po­nent in en­sur­ing that mon­ey al­ready ex­pend­ed is not wast­ed or thrown away by way of the degra­da­tion of ex­ist­ing struc­tures with­out prop­er­ly se­cur­ing them, in this case by com­plet­ing them.” 

Kublals­ingh al­so said that as part of the ap­peal, the group has filed for an in­junc­tion to stop the work over al­leged breach­es of the Land Ac­qui­si­tion Act. The in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion is ex­pect­ed to come up for hear­ing on No­vem­ber 5. A date for the hear­ing of the sub­stan­tive ap­peal is yet to be set by the Ju­di­cia­ry. 

Kublals­ingh main­tained that the dis­pute could have been re­solved with­out the need for lit­i­ga­tion. 

“We are ask­ing for some­thing sim­ple-sit with us and talk,” Kublals­ingh said.

The law­suit arose as a re­sult of the group’s long-stand­ing bat­tle with the Gov­ern­ment over the seg­ment of the project. 

Kublals­ingh em­barked on two hunger strikes in protest of the con­struc­tion-the first in 2012, which last­ed 21 days and a sec­ond in 2014 which last­ed 288 days. 

Af­ter the first hunger strike, for­mer prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ap­point­ed a team of 17 pro­fes­sion­als led by Arm­strong to con­sid­er the group’s en­vi­ron­men­tal claims. 

Arm­strong and his team pro­duced a 700-page tech­ni­cal re­port, which Kublals­ingh and the group claimed was ig­nored. 

Tes­ti­fy­ing in the tri­al of the case, Kublals­ingh claimed to have got­ten per­mis­sion from the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Namde­v­co) to build the camp near its mar­ket in Debe. 

He al­so ad­mit­ted to re­sist­ing the sol­diers as he felt that they were act­ing il­le­gal­ly in evict­ing him and his sup­port­ers and de­stroy­ing their makeshift camp. 

Kublals­ingh and the HRM were rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Fyard Ho­sein, SC, Rishi Dass, Anil Maraj, and Vi­jaya Ma­haraj. 

The State was rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, Kelvin Ramkissoon, Shas­tri Roberts, and Ryan­ka Rag­bir.