DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A cell­phone deal­er has threat­ened to sue Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL)’s Jet­pak Sky­box couri­er ser­vice over its re­fusal to re­im­burse him for two lost pack­ages al­leged­ly con­tain­ing US$11,682 in mer­chan­dise. 

At­tor­ney Richard Jag­gasar, who is rep­re­sent­ing Re­hin Burke, the own­er of Burke Cor­po­ra­tion Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed, made the threat in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to CAL’s cor­po­rate sec­re­tary and gen­er­al coun­sel Nali­ni Lal­la on Thurs­day. 

In the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Jag­gasar claimed that his client shipped three pack­ages through CAL’s Jet­pak ser­vice in late Sep­tem­ber 2022. 

Sev­er­al weeks lat­er, a CAL of­fi­cial al­leged­ly con­tact­ed Burke that the pack­ages had ar­rived in Trinidad and would be de­liv­ered in two days. 

He re­ceived cor­re­spon­dence from the com­pa­ny on the freight, ser­vice and han­dling fees for each of the pack­ages. 

Burke was on­ly able to col­lect one of the pack­ages when he vis­it­ed the com­pa­ny’s of­fice and claimed that it was miss­ing sev­en cell phones. 

Jag­gasar claimed that Burke made an of­fi­cial claim for the items but the mat­ter was nev­er set­tled by the com­pa­ny. 

Sev­er­al weeks lat­er, he was in­formed by an­oth­er em­ploy­ee that the two oth­er pack­ages were lost. 

Jag­gasar said his client com­plied with the rep­re­sen­ta­tion and made a sep­a­rate claim in re­la­tion to the two lost pack­ages. 

On Jan­u­ary 24, CAL’s car­go lo­gis­tics of­fi­cer Charelle As­see did not ac­cept li­a­bil­i­ty on be­half of the com­pa­ny but of­fered a $1,000 set­tle­ment.

“This de­ci­sion is pure­ly a busi­ness one, giv­en the unique cir­cum­stances of the case,” she said. 

She al­so point­ed out that Burke did not fol­low the com­pa­ny’s of­fi­cial pol­i­cy, which re­quires that such claims be made with­in sev­en days. 

As­see not­ed that there were dis­crep­an­cies with the ini­tial in­voic­es pro­vid­ed by Burke and the val­ue of his even­tu­al claims. 

“This change in in­for­ma­tion af­ter a year and more pos­es a chal­lenge to our stan­dard pro­ce­dures,” As­see said. 

“De­spite this, we un­der­stand the im­por­tance of re­solv­ing this mat­ter am­i­ca­bly and, in the spir­it of main­tain­ing a pos­i­tive busi­ness re­la­tion­ship, we are of­fer­ing the afore­men­tioned set­tle­ment. We hope this demon­strates our com­mit­ment to find­ing a fair res­o­lu­tion,” she added. 

In re­sponse, Burke ad­mit­ted that he had ini­tial­ly sent the wrong in­voic­es but claimed that he sub­se­quent­ly cor­rect­ed the er­ror. 

He ad­mit­ted that he could not make a claim in re­la­tion to the items that were al­leged­ly miss­ing from the pack­age he did re­ceive as he did not open it and check the in­ven­to­ry be­fore leav­ing CAL’s of­fice. 

He al­so ques­tioned the com­pa­ny’s re­liance on the week-long dead­line for the claim as it was de­layed in its re­sponse to it. 

“Take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that when I start­ed the claim on the No­vem­ber 11, 2022, the first re­sponse was on the No­vem­ber 24, 2022 which is longer than the 7-day pe­ri­od for claims mean­ing the claim pol­i­cy was ig­nored from the very be­gin­ning,” he said, as he main­tained that he should be re­im­bursed US$5,841 for each of the miss­ing pack­ages. 

In re­sponse, As­see main­tained that the com­pa­ny could not ac­cept full li­a­bil­i­ty. 

“As pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed, our li­a­bil­i­ty is sub­ject to cer­tain lim­its and, un­for­tu­nate­ly, due to the time frame and sev­er­al in­con­sis­ten­cies in the pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion, we are un­able to ac­cept full li­a­bil­i­ty for the claimed amount,” she said. 

She al­so pre­sent­ed a re­vised set­tle­ment of­fer of US$2,950. 

In the le­gal let­ter, Jag­gasar claimed that the com­pa­ny breached its con­tract with his client. 

He claimed that a glob­al set­tle­ment of US$15,576 as well as $50,000 would suf­fice to set­tle the le­gal dis­pute. 

“On­ly in this case will the In­tend­ed Claimant con­tin­ue to be a loy­al cus­tomer of the in­tend­ed de­fen­dant,” he said. 

He not­ed that the sug­gest­ed set­tle­ment fig­ures were cal­cu­lat­ed based on the fact that he lost po­ten­tial in­come as a re­sult of deal­ing with CAL over the is­sue as he would nor­mal­ly make one-third prof­it on each cell phone.

“The time and ef­fort ex­pend­ed in deal­ing with the reper­cus­sions of the miss­ing pack­ages re­sult­ed in a sig­nif­i­cant di­ver­sion of at­ten­tion from rev­enue gen­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, lead­ing to a quan­tifi­able loss in salary and wages,” he said. 

Jag­gasar al­so claimed that Burke suf­fered emo­tion­al dis­tress and his com­pa­ny’s rep­u­ta­tion was dam­aged. 

“As a busi­ness­man op­er­at­ing in the re­tail in­dus­try, the in­abil­i­ty to de­liv­er promised goods to cus­tomers due to the de­fen­dant’s neg­li­gence tar­nished Mr Burke’s pro­fes­sion­al stand­ing and erod­ed trust among his clien­tèle,” he said. 

Jag­gasar gave the com­pa­ny 28 days in which to re­spond to the let­ter and ac­cept Burke’s set­tle­ment counter-of­fer be­fore fil­ing a law­suit over the is­sue.