STATE FACES SOE LAWSUIT

Ot­to car­ring­ton &

Jesse Ramdeo

At least 25 peo­ple de­tained un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) are con­sid­er­ing le­gal ac­tion against the State in a bid to se­cure com­pen­sa­tion for their in­car­cer­a­tion, ac­cord­ing to at­tor­ney CJ Williams.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Williams said Quan­tum Le­gal is cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ing at least 25 for­mer de­tainees, but he ex­pects that num­ber to rise as more in­di­vid­u­als seek ad­vice on their le­gal op­tions.

“I would say ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 min­i­mum,” Williams said. “How­ev­er, from our clients in­side, there are a num­ber of per­sons who wish to come and ask CJ what’s next.”

He said each case would be as­sessed on its in­di­vid­ual mer­its be­fore any de­ci­sion is made on whether to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion.

“What I can say is that some per­sons have a clear-cut case where they ought to be en­ti­tled to some sort of com­pen­sa­tion,” Williams said.

How­ev­er, he stressed that de­ten­tion un­der a PDO does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly en­ti­tle a per­son to dam­ages.

“We must take it on a case-by-case ba­sis,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Williams, a key con­sid­er­a­tion will be how Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der ex­er­cised his dis­cre­tion in au­tho­ris­ing each PDO.

“It all boils down to how a min­is­ter ex­er­cised his dis­cre­tion on a case-by-case ba­sis. It’s not like one shoe could fit all,” Williams said.

He point­ed to the case of artiste Joseph “Medz Boss” Ol­livierre, whose PDO was lat­er re­voked. Williams said Ol­livierre al­leged­ly re­mained in cus­tody be­cause of an ad­min­is­tra­tive er­ror with­in the prison sys­tem, a cir­cum­stance he be­lieves could war­rant le­gal scruti­ny.

The po­ten­tial law­suits form part of a broad­er re­sponse by Quan­tum Le­gal to the fall­out from the SoE, which ends on Thurs­day.

Any le­gal chal­lenge, how­ev­er, will not like­ly as clearcut as it seems for the for­mer de­tainees.

Un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2026, which gov­ern the is­suance of PDOs, the Gov­ern­ment in­clud­ed a pro­vi­sion shield­ing the State from the type civ­il li­a­bil­i­ty which fol­lowed the SoE in 2011.

The reg­u­la­tion states: “No per­son shall be li­able to any suit or ac­tion in re­spect of any act done un­der law­ful di­rec­tion and au­thor­i­ty pur­suant to the pro­vi­sions of these Reg­u­la­tions.”

How­ev­er, the reg­u­la­tions al­so pro­vide for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­pen­sa­tion from pub­lic funds, at the dis­cre­tion of the Pres­i­dent, where a per­son is found to have suf­fered loss or dam­age as a re­sult of the ex­er­cise of cer­tain emer­gency pow­ers.

The pro­vi­sion states that the Pres­i­dent may award com­pen­sa­tion if sat­is­fied that an in­di­vid­ual has suf­fered loss or dam­age through the ex­er­cise of pow­ers un­der Reg­u­la­tion 3, ex­cept sub­reg­u­la­tion (2)(j), and Reg­u­la­tion 4.

The word­ing, how­ev­er, ap­pears open to in­ter­pre­ta­tion and rais­es ques­tions about the dis­tinc­tion be­tween pur­su­ing a civ­il law­suit against the State and seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion through the mech­a­nism es­tab­lished un­der the reg­u­la­tions.

The SoE was pro­claimed on March 3, 2026, amid Gov­ern­ment con­cerns over or­gan­ised gang vi­o­lence, ris­ing crime and threats to mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and Gov­ern­ment.

Par­lia­ment sub­se­quent­ly ap­proved ex­ten­sions of the emer­gency mea­sures, with the cur­rent ex­ten­sion set to ex­pire on Thurs­day.

Un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, au­thor­i­ties were grant­ed ex­pand­ed pow­ers, in­clud­ing the au­thor­i­ty for the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to is­sue Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders to any­one deemed to be a threat to na­tion­al and pub­lic safe­ty.

Guardian Me­dia is await­ing a re­sponse from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der on the is­sue.

For­mer AG un­cer­tain if civ­il ac­tion pos­si­ble

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the is­sue, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj said he was un­cer­tain whether the reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE) per­mit in­di­vid­u­als to sue the State, but not­ed that he had suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions dur­ing the 2011 SoE.

Asked whether the same le­gal reme­dies avail­able un­der the 2011 SoE would ap­ply to­day, Ma­haraj said he could not say, as he was un­sure whether the reg­u­la­tions were iden­ti­cal.

“I do not know whether the reg­u­la­tions un­der this emer­gency are the same as those reg­u­la­tions,” he said.

Ma­haraj re­called rep­re­sent­ing three in­di­vid­u­als dur­ing the 2011 SoE, in a case that re­sult­ed in the Court of Ap­peal award­ing dam­ages in their favour. How­ev­er, he said the mat­ter re­mains un­re­solved, as he is chal­leng­ing the amount of com­pen­sa­tion award­ed, while a sep­a­rate chal­lenge to the le­gal­i­ty of the SoE is still pend­ing be­fore the Privy Coun­cil.

“Un­der those reg­u­la­tions, I claimed com­pen­sa­tion and the court award­ed dam­ages. How­ev­er, we are chal­leng­ing the quan­tum of that com­pen­sa­tion. The Court of Ap­peal award­ed dam­ages, but we be­lieve the amount was in­ad­e­quate and that is­sue re­mains be­fore the courts,” he said.

Ma­haraj rep­re­sent­ed Earl Elie, Do­minic Piti­lal and Ash­meed Mo­hammed, who ar­gued that the SoE procla­ma­tion, reg­u­la­tions and their ar­rests vi­o­lat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions. They al­so com­plained of re­stric­tions on ac­cess to le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion dur­ing their de­ten­tions.

In 2017, the High Court found that some of the de­tainees’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were breached, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing ac­cess to le­gal coun­sel, al­though the court did not in­val­i­date the en­tire SoE. The mat­ter lat­er went to the Court of Ap­peal, which award­ed dam­ages to the claimants but both the claimants and State chal­lenged as­pects of the rul­ing, lead­ing to ap­peals to the Privy Coun­cil.