Appeal court revives recruit’s shoulder injury claim

Derek Achong

A po­lice of­fi­cer has won his ap­peal in a long-run­ning le­gal fight over a shoul­der in­jury he suf­fered as a re­cruit, af­ter the Court of Ap­peal over­turned a High Court de­ci­sion that had dis­missed his case.

In an oral rul­ing de­liv­ered last week, Ap­pel­late Judges Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er, Car­la Brown-An­toine and Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well up­held PC Sharaz Mo­han’s ap­peal against the dis­missal of his neg­li­gence and per­son­al in­jury claim.

The case arose from an in­ci­dent in June 2014 while Mo­han was train­ing at the Ch­aguara­mas Ho­tel and Con­ven­tion Cen­tre.

He said he and oth­er male trainees were in their dor­mi­to­ry when a woman po­lice con­sta­ble as­signed to the Po­lice Acad­e­my en­tered and rep­ri­mand­ed them for mak­ing noise.

The of­fi­cer re­port­ed­ly or­dered Mo­han and the oth­ers to crawl down a stair­case on all fours.

They com­plied, but one trainee stum­bled and knocked Mo­han over. He rolled down al­most two dozen steps be­fore stop­ping on a land­ing.

Mo­han said he com­plained of ex­cru­ci­at­ing pain in his right shoul­der, but the of­fi­cer di­rect­ed him to com­plete an hour of ex­er­cis­es. His re­quest for med­ical treat­ment was re­fused.

When he was lat­er ex­am­ined and un­der­went an MRI scan, doc­tors di­ag­nosed a dis­lo­cat­ed shoul­der.

Mo­han com­plet­ed his train­ing and was ap­point­ed a po­lice of­fi­cer. He lat­er filed a law­suit, claim­ing he con­tin­ued to suf­fer pain and dis­com­fort.

A High Court judge dis­missed his case in Au­gust 2021. His at­tor­neys, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, ap­pealed.

In al­low­ing the ap­peal, the pan­el crit­i­cised the judge for fail­ing to pro­duce a writ­ten judg­ment af­ter de­liv­er­ing an oral rul­ing. The judges al­so found she did not ad­dress sub­mis­sions on em­ploy­ers’ li­a­bil­i­ty raised by Mo­han’s at­tor­neys.

The court held that the of­fi­cer act­ed out­side her au­thor­i­ty, as trainee reg­u­la­tions re­quire dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ters to be re­port­ed to the di­rec­tor of train­ing. It al­so found that the State failed in its du­ty to pro­vide a com­pe­tent in­struc­tor.

The pan­el fur­ther ruled that the judge did not prop­er­ly as­sess the ev­i­dence of Mo­han’s med­ical ex­pert on the last­ing ef­fects of his in­jury.

Al­though the Court of Ap­peal up­held Mo­han’s claim, a High Court Mas­ter will as­sess com­pen­sa­tion at a lat­er date.

Mo­han was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Jared Ja­groo, Can­dice Ramkha­lawan and Joanne Singh. The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Rachel Ja­cob and Brent James.