Construction worker awarded nearly $100,000 for unlawful arrest

DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The State has been or­dered to pay al­most $100,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a con­struc­tion work­er who was wrong­ful­ly ar­rest­ed and de­tained for al­leged­ly at­tempt­ing to sell equip­ment stolen from his em­ploy­er.

High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for Ger­shon Se­u­nar­ine as he up­held his wrong­ful ar­rest and false im­pris­on­ment case last Fri­day.

The law­suit stemmed from Se­u­nar­ine's ar­rest in March 2018.

Se­u­nar­ine was em­ployed as an equip­ment su­per­vi­sor with a com­pa­ny which had a con­struc­tion con­tract at a pri­ma­ry school in cen­tral Trinidad.

Two weld­ing plants re­port­ed­ly went miss­ing af­ter they were re­moved from the job­site and tak­en to the com­pa­ny's com­pound in Mau­si­ca.

PC Visham Ra­moutar, who de­tained Se­u­nar­ine, claimed that he was ar­rest­ed as he (Ra­moutar) re­ceived cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion from a con­fi­den­tial in­for­mant, who al­leged that Se­u­nar­ine at­tempt­ed to sell the miss­ing equip­ment for $80,000.

Se­u­nar­ine claimed that he was held in an un­san­i­tary cell at a po­lice sta­tion for 13 and a half hours be­fore be­ing re­leased with­out be­ing charged.

In de­ter­min­ing whether PC Ra­moutar had rea­son­able or prob­a­ble cause to ar­rest Se­u­nar­ine, Jus­tice Mo­hammed ques­tioned his fail­ure to pro­vide ev­i­dence prov­ing that he re­ceived in­for­ma­tion link­ing Se­u­nar­ine to the miss­ing equip­ment.

"The Court found that PC Ra­moutar's ex­pla­na­tion of not pro­duc­ing a state­ment to pro­tect the in­for­mant's iden­ti­ty was un­sat­is­fac­to­ry," he said.

He al­so ques­tioned why Se­u­nar­ine was not in­ter­ro­gat­ed based on the in­for­ma­tion.

"If this in­for­ma­tion was a gen­uine ba­sis for sus­pi­cion, then it was in­con­ceiv­able that it would not have been raised with the sus­pect," he said.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed found that Se­u­nar­ine's ar­rest was un­law­ful and un­rea­son­able.

Deal­ing with the length of Se­u­nar­ine's de­ten­tion, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that PC Ra­moutar and his col­leagues on­ly spent two hours con­duct­ing ac­tu­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions and could not jus­ti­fy their de­lay in com­plet­ing the probe.

In de­cid­ing on the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion, Jus­tice Mo­hammed award­ed $52,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages for Se­u­nar­ine, who claimed he was trau­ma­tised by his ex­pe­ri­ence in po­lice cus­tody.

He al­so award­ed $18,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages for the of­fi­cers' con­duct.

"The con­duct rep­re­sent­ed a se­ri­ous abuse of po­lice pow­er and re­quired the Court's marked dis­ap­proval to de­ter sim­i­lar fu­ture be­hav­iour/mis­con­duct," he said.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed or­dered in­ter­est on the dam­ages and di­rect­ed that the State pay $20,179.63 in le­gal costs.

Se­u­nar­ine was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Kevin Rati­ram.

Last week, Jus­tice Mo­hammed or­dered over $1 mil­lion for a Princes Town fam­i­ly, al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Rati­ram, which was ma­li­cious­ly pros­e­cut­ed for mar­i­jua­na traf­fick­ing.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Maria Bel­mar-Williams and Svet­lana Dass.