Judge says justice must not depend on personal wealth

Derek Achong

A High Court judge has said cit­i­zens should not be shut out of the courts be­cause they lack fi­nan­cial re­sources.

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion by a Point Fortin man to pro­ceed with his med­ical neg­li­gence law­suit de­spite fil­ing it out­side the statu­to­ry time lim­it.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said: “The court does not on­ly serve the wealthy or the con­nect­ed, it serves all cit­i­zens and, ir­re­spec­tive of their cir­cum­stance, must en­sure that each and every cit­i­zen is af­ford­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to have rea­son­able ac­cess to the ju­di­cial sys­tem.”

“This court firm­ly be­lieves that once it is eq­ui­table, fair, and rea­son­able, it should al­ways ju­di­cious­ly ex­er­cise any vest­ed dis­cre­tion in a man­ner which aids in the de­ter­mi­na­tion of dis­putes in­sti­tut­ed by the poor, vul­ner­a­ble or dis­en­fran­chised and in this case the claimant’s plight can­not be light­ly dis­re­gard­ed,” he added.

The claim, brought by Hol­lis Williams, arose from a hand in­jury he sus­tained in a chop­ping in­ci­dent in Au­gust 2015.

He was tak­en to the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal, where doc­tors rec­om­mend­ed ten­don graft surgery at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

He com­plied and lat­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in phys­io­ther­a­py at the hos­pi­tal’s Or­thopaedic Clin­ic.

Williams con­tin­ued to ex­pe­ri­ence pain and lim­it­ed move­ment in his fin­gers and was even­tu­al­ly as­sessed as 10 per cent per­ma­nent­ly par­tial­ly dis­abled.

In 2019, Williams ap­plied to the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty for as­sis­tance in pur­su­ing a neg­li­gence claim.

His mat­ter was re­as­signed sev­er­al times be­fore of­fi­cials as­signed it to at­tor­ney Aaron Patrick, who filed the claim last year.

Williams al­so said he faced de­lays be­cause he need­ed time to source the fi­nances re­quired to re­tain a med­ical ex­pert.

At­tor­neys for the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, which man­ages both fa­cil­i­ties, ar­gued that the court should strike out the claim be­cause Williams filed it out­side the four-year statu­to­ry pe­ri­od un­der the Lim­i­ta­tion of Cer­tain Ac­tions Act.

In de­ter­min­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said the lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od would have ex­pired in Oc­to­ber 2020 but was ex­tend­ed to No­vem­ber 2022 due to the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

He found that Williams’ ex­pla­na­tions for the de­lay were rea­son­able.

“The ex­pla­na­tions out­lined in the claimant’s af­fi­davit can­not prop­er­ly be char­ac­terised as be­ing in­dica­tive of con­duct which was dila­to­ry or lais­sez-faire,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

“It is ob­vi­ous that he has lim­it­ed fi­nan­cial re­sources and al­though he ap­plied for le­gal aid, his ap­pli­ca­tion was ac­com­pa­nied by chal­lenges,” he added.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said Williams on­ly se­cured the ser­vices of the med­ical ex­pert af­ter Patrick’s ap­point­ment in 2023.

“The court read­i­ly ac­cepts that there was some de­lay in ac­quir­ing the ex­pert med­ical re­port, but the ev­i­dence demon­strates that de­lay which en­sued was in large mea­sure at­trib­ut­able to facts and cir­cum­stances which were out­side the claimant’s con­trol,” he said.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said the au­thor­i­ty claimed it would suf­fer prej­u­dice be­cause its staff could not re­call de­tails of Williams’ treat­ment and could not lo­cate some of his med­ical records.

How­ev­er, he said Williams would face greater prej­u­dice if the court did not al­low him to pur­sue the claim.

The rul­ing means Williams’ case will pro­ceed to tri­al at a lat­er date.

Williams was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Kris­ten Ban­sraj and Govin­da Ti­wari. The South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Ganesh Sa­roop, Ami­rah Ram­dass, Seth Rams­den and Vishaal Siewsaran.