Derek Achong

A To­ba­go busi­ness­man has won his law­suit against the State over the al­most five-year seizure of his ex­ca­va­tor.

In a re­cent de­ci­sion, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad up­held Damo­la Charles’ law­suit and or­dered the re­lease of the heavy equip­ment.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad agreed that Charles and his com­pa­ny Re­fined Trade and Lo­gis­tics were en­ti­tled to com­pen­sa­tion for the loss of use of the equip­ment but did not as­sess the fig­ure as he gave lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Charles and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al time to hold set­tle­ment dis­cus­sions.

Ac­cord­ing to his court fil­ings, Charles pur­chased the Cater­pil­lar ex­ca­va­tor in March 2016.

He claimed that on No­vem­ber 3, 2018, the ex­ca­va­tor was be­ing stored in Waller­field when mem­bers of the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) seized it and trans­port­ed it to the First En­gi­neer­ing Bat­tal­ion Camp in Cu­mu­to.

He claimed that he made a re­port to the po­lice and pro­vid­ed proof of own­er­ship be­fore ac­com­pa­ny­ing two po­lice of­fi­cers to the TTDF camp where he iden­ti­fied the ex­ca­va­tor.

He claimed that al­though po­lice of­fi­cers at the Cu­mu­to and La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice Sta­tions con­firmed that the ex­ca­va­tor was not seized as part of an on­go­ing crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, it was not re­turned or re­leased to him.

He even­tu­al­ly filed the law­suit over the is­sue in 2021.

“As at the date of fil­ing, no prop­er and/or law­ful ex­pla­na­tion and/or rea­son has been ad­vanced as to why the ex­ca­va­tor is still in the pos­ses­sion of the De­fen­dant, de­spite the Claimant be­ing the on­ly per­son law­ful­ly en­ti­tled to the said ve­hi­cle,” Charles’ lawyers Joel Rop­er, Sher­von Nor­ie­ga, and Ger­ard Boodram said, as they claimed that the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was un­law­ful.

“As a re­sult of the afore­men­tioned, the Claimant suf­fered stress, em­bar­rass­ment, hu­mil­i­a­tion, in­con­ve­nience, and sub­stan­tial loss of earn­ings,” they said.

In de­fence of the case, the AG’s Of­fice de­nied any wrong­do­ing as State at­tor­neys claimed that their in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that Charles’ ex­ca­va­tor was not among a batch in the TTDF camp which were seized as part of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to il­le­gal quar­ry­ing.

They al­so claimed that there were no records of the seizure on the date claimed by Charles.

Re­ply­ing to the po­si­tion, Charles pro­vid­ed pho­tographs of the lo­ca­tion where it was be­ing stored.

“The Claimant mon­i­tored the ex­ca­va­tor over the years and has en­sured that it was nev­er moved from the lo­ca­tion it was kept,” his lawyers said.

In the law­suit, Charles was seek­ing over $4 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion.

The com­pen­sa­tion be­ing sought in­cludes $100,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages for the de­pre­ci­a­tion of the ex­ca­va­tor and $3.8 mil­lion in spe­cial dam­ages for loss of earn­ings which was cal­cu­lat­ed at a rate of $2,500 a day for 51 months.

He is al­so seek­ing over $100,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for the le­gal fees he in­curred in pur­su­ing the case as well as in­ter­est on the com­pen­sa­tion.

In the event that the par­ties are un­able to ar­rive at a suit­able set­tle­ment, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad is ex­pect­ed to as­sess the dam­ages to be paid by the State.

The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Hillary Mud­deen, Rachel Wright, Ste­fan Jaikaran, and San­jiv Sookoo.