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Sunday, July 27, 2025

Judge calls on TTGF to explain delay to pay Thema

by

1023 days ago
20221007
Gymnast Thema Williams.

Gymnast Thema Williams.

NICOLE DRAYTON

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Gym­nas­tics Fed­er­a­tion (TTGF) has been or­dered to jus­ti­fy why a High Court Judge should not force it to pay over $200,000 in com­pen­sa­tion award­ed to gym­nast The­ma Williams four years ago in her law­suit over her failed Olympic bid. 

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad made the or­der as an ap­pli­ca­tion from Williams to gar­nish the fed­er­a­tion’s bank ac­count for her long-out­stand­ing com­pen­sa­tion, came up for hear­ing yes­ter­day. 

On Mon­day, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad grant­ed a pro­vi­sion­al or­der freez­ing one of the fed­er­a­tion’s bank ac­counts with Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing, the TTGF’s at­tor­ney Farai Hove-Ma­sai­sai called on Jus­tice Seep­er­sad to not make the or­der fi­nal in or­der for Williams to be paid from the frozen ac­count.

Ma­sai­sai claimed that the mon­ey held in the ac­count was giv­en to his client by the State for spe­cif­ic pur­pos­es and should not be used to clear its debt to Williams. 

While Jus­tice Seep­er­sad grant­ed the TTGF per­mis­sion to file an af­fi­davit on the is­sue, he still raised con­cerns that his judge­ment in Williams’ case was not com­plied with. 

“I am quite alarmed that a de­ci­sion in No­vem­ber 2018 has not been sat­is­fied and com­pli­ance with the rule of law is manda­to­ry,” he said, as he de­scribed the de­lay as un­ac­cept­able. 

He al­so or­dered the bank to sub­mit its own ev­i­dence on the sta­tus of the ac­count. 

The ap­pli­ca­tion is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing on Oc­to­ber 27. 

In the law­suit, Williams claimed that the fed­er­a­tion and four mem­bers of its then ex­ec­u­tive—for­mer TTGF pres­i­dent David Mar­quez, vice-pres­i­dent Ak­il Wat­t­ley, Ri­car­do Lue Shue and his wife Don­na—were bi­ased when they with­drew and re­placed her from rep­re­sent­ing the coun­try at an Olympic test event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in April 2016.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, their de­ci­sion was large­ly based on a trav­el log from Williams’ coach John Ged­dert.

In the log, Ged­dert re­vealed that Williams per­formed poor­ly at warm-up events. 

In his judge­ment, Seep­er­sad not­ed that al­though the ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers ac­knowl­edged that they need­ed more in­for­ma­tion from Ged­dert to de­ter­mine if she should be with­drawn due to in­jury, they went ahead to pre­pare Maris­sa Dick to re­place her, with­out it. 

He not­ed that while Mar­quez claimed he tried un­suc­cess­ful­ly to call Ged­dert, tele­phone records showed that the calls were made well af­ter he and ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers en­sured that Dick was avail­able to make the last-minute trip.
 “The court formed the view that these de­fen­dants al­lowed their en­trenched bi­as­es to cloud their judge­ment and they act­ed with un­due haste, de­prived them­selves of the ben­e­fit of rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion and ul­ti­mate­ly ef­fect­ed a flawed de­ci­sion,” Seep­er­sad ruled.

He al­so not­ed that the fed­er­a­tion al­so did not con­sult with its phys­io­ther­a­pist who was with Williams in Brazil. 

While Williams was seek­ing to hold the ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers per­son­al­ly li­able, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad did not up­hold that as­pect of her case. 

While Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that Williams was able to prove that Mar­quez and Wat­t­ley were bi­ased against her and that the Lue Shues favoured her re­place­ment, he stat­ed that there was no ev­i­dence that the group con­spired to block Williams.

Williams was ini­tial­ly seek­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in com­pen­sa­tion for en­dorse­ment deals and a schol­ar­ship she said she would have re­ceived if she be­came the first per­son to rep­re­sent T&T in gym­nas­tics at the Olympic Games. 

Seep­er­sad said that he could not up­hold the claims as Williams was un­able to pro­duce con­crete ev­i­dence over the po­ten­tial deals. 

How­ev­er, he still ruled that she was en­ti­tled to $50,000 com­pen­sa­tion as it could be in­ferred that her earn­ing pow­er would have in­creased with her par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Olympics. 

In ad­di­tion to com­pen­sa­tion for loss of op­por­tu­ni­ties, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so award­ed her $150,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages for the fed­er­a­tion’s ar­bi­trary con­duct. 

Un­der the gar­nishee ap­pli­ca­tion, Williams’ lawyers are claim­ing that she is al­so owed over $38,000 in in­ter­est, which con­tin­ues to ac­crue at five per cent per an­num, un­til the judge­ment debt is cleared.   

Williams was rep­re­sent­ed by Dar­rell Al­la­har and Reza Ramjohn, while Tonya Row­ley rep­re­sent­ed the bank. 


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