Fran­cis Joseph

Rhon­da Ju­lian, one of the per­sons who suf­fered in­juries at the Re­al Uni­ty Con­cert in Ch­aguara­mas more than eight years ago, has been award­ed $450,000 in dam­ages. The set­tle­ment fig­ure was ar­rived at last week be­fore Jus­tice Char­maine Pem­ber­ton in the Port-of-Spain High Court. Ju­lian was among oth­er peo­ple who filed claims against so­ca star, Machel Mon­tano, Xtat­ic Ltd, Randy Glas­gow Pro­duc­tion Ltd and Safe­way Ac­cess and Sup­port Sys­tems Ltd.

Last month, an or­der was en­tered against the de­fen­dants for li­a­bil­i­ty. The mat­ter then went for as­sess­ment of dam­ages. Ju­lian was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Mar­tin George. The mat­ter is still be­ing heard be­fore Pem­ber­ton where oth­er claimants are seek­ing dam­ages for their in­juries. Sev­er­al peo­ple, in­clud­ing po­lice and fire of­fi­cials, have al­ready tes­ti­fied at the hear­ing. Ju­lian, 33, who lives in St Ann's, said in her af­fi­davit that she re­spond­ed to an ad­ver­tise­ment for the Re­al Uni­ty Con­cert on No­vem­ber 25, 2000.

The con­cert, she added, was or­gan­ised un­der the di­rec­tion and pa­tron­age of Mon­tano and Xtat­ic Ltd as a trib­ute by Mon­tano to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and his fans world­wide for all the sup­port they had giv­en to him through­out his so­ca ca­reer. Randy Glas­gow Pro­duc­tion Ltd was the pro­mot­er of the Re­al Uni­ty Con­cert and/or an agent of Machel Mon­tano and Xtat­ic Ltd.

Safe­way Ac­cess and Sup­port Sys­tems Ltd was em­ployed by the pro­mot­er and/or Mon­tano and Xtat­ic Ltd to con­struct scaf­fold­ing struc­tures for the VIP seat­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion at the Re­al Uni­ty Con­cert. "Philmore Davis, Ria Ju­lian and my­self planned to get to the event ear­ly be­cause we had no in­ten­tion of miss­ing a beat," Ju­lian said.

Al­though we left home ear­ly, there was a tremen­dous amount of traf­fic to get to the event. We fi­nal­ly got to the event and we had VIP tick­ets,

"How­ev­er, we could not lo­cate the tick­et­ed seats be­cause of the over­crowd­ing and the ab­sence of per­son­nel con­trol­ling seat­ing. Af­ter search­ing for some time we lo­cat­ed three seats with­in the VIP area and oc­cu­pied them.

"They went to get some drinks and re­grouped at the bot­tom of the stand/plat­form to go back up to our seats be­cause the time was ap­proach­ing for Mon­tano to come on stage. "I can't re­mem­ber see­ing his en­trance on stage but short­ly af­ter he be­gan per­form­ing, the VIP stand came crash­ing down and I fell and I can­not re­mem­ber pre­cise­ly what hap­pened af­ter that un­til I woke up in the hos­pi­tal."

Ju­lian re­mem­bered be­ing in pain. At the hos­pi­tal, She said she was on so much med­ica­tion that she was out of con­scious­ness most of the time. She re­mem­bered Mon­tano, his moth­er and a few oth­er mem­bers of the band vis­it­ed her at the hos­pi­tal. Ju­lian spent five days at hos­pi­tal fol­low­ing which she was sent home to re­cov­er.

"It was a very long and dif­fi­cult re­cov­ery be­cause I was in so much pain," she said. She suf­fered in­juries to her back, knees, and oth­er ar­eas of her body. Be­cause of the ac­ci­dent, Ju­lian said she lost her job and a lot of in­come. As part of her re­cov­ery, Ju­lian went to Cana­da and had surgery per­formed on her.