A fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant has re­ceived a life­line in her le­gal bat­tle with Guardian Life of the Caribbean Lim­it­ed for com­pen­sa­tion for in­juries she al­leged­ly sus­tained af­ter slip­ping and falling on a wet floor at the com­pa­ny’s build­ing in Port-of-Spain. 

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment in a pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal, yes­ter­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar and Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh re­ject­ed an ap­pli­ca­tion from the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny to dis­miss Prim­il­la Di­al-Seep­aul’s sub­stan­tive ap­peal over the out­come of her case be­cause her at­tor­neys missed a dead­line for fil­ing sub­mis­sions. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the in­ci­dent oc­curred at the com­pa­ny’s build­ing at St Vin­cent Street in Port-of-Spain on Sep­tem­ber 9, 2017. 

Di­al-Seep­aul, who claimed to be a con­sul­tant with the com­pa­ny, said she was walk­ing when she slipped on the wet floor and hit her head and face.  

Di­al-Seep­aul filed a law­suit against the com­pa­ny and claimed that it was neg­li­gent in the in­ci­dent. 

She was seek­ing gen­er­al dam­ages for her per­son­al in­juries, which she claimed still pre­cludes her from work­ing, and $1.3 mil­lion in spe­cial dam­ages. 

In the claim, Di­al-Seep­aul ad­mit­ted that she re­ceived $633,912.34 from the com­pa­ny in Work­men’s Com­pen­sa­tion for her loss of earn­ings. 

The com­pa­ny filed a coun­ter­claim against Di­al-Seep­aul in which it al­leged that she was not em­ployed by it but rather by PGM Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices, which oc­cu­pied the floor of the build­ing where the fall oc­curred.

It de­nied any wrong­do­ing as it sug­gest­ed that PGM and Servus Lim­it­ed, a prop­er­ty main­te­nance com­pa­ny it hired for the build­ing, should be held li­able for the in­ci­dent. 

It al­so claimed Di­al-Seep­aul had a du­ty to take rea­son­able care to pro­tect her own safe­ty and chal­lenged the ex­tent of her claimed in­juries. 

Through the coun­ter­claim, the com­pa­ny was seek­ing re­im­burse­ment of the work­men’s com­pen­sa­tion pay­ment, which it claimed that Di­al-Seep­aul wrong­ful­ly re­ceived. 

The de­ci­sion in the pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal means that her sub­stan­tive ap­peal over Jus­tice Mo­hammed’s de­ci­sion would now be heard by the Court of Ap­peal at a lat­er date. 

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