The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has been vic­to­ri­ous in a le­gal bat­tle over its abil­i­ty to en­force noise pol­lu­tion rules.

Ear­li­er this month, three Law Lords of the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil re­fused to grant event pro­mo­tion com­pa­ny, Wild Goose Lim­it­ed, leave to pur­sue a fi­nal ap­peal in its law­suit over the shut­down of its Tail­gate Car­ni­val event in 2019. Lords David Lloyd-Jones, Philip Sales, and Ben Stephens ruled that the com­pa­ny did not raise an ar­guable point of law of gen­er­al pub­lic im­por­tance in its ap­peal. 

The com­pa­ny ap­plied di­rect­ly to the Privy Coun­cil af­ter it was re­fused leave by the Court of Ap­peal last De­cem­ber. 

The de­ci­sion came al­most two months af­ter three ap­pel­late judges over­turned Jus­tice Mar­garet Mo­hammed’s de­ci­sion to up­hold the case in 2021. 

In a press re­lease late last week, the EMA said the out­come was a win for cit­i­zens of T&T who have been lob­by­ing for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the spe­cif­ic du­ties and pow­ers of a re­spon­si­ble au­thor­i­ty. 

“Recog­nis­ing that the man­age­ment of noise pol­lu­tion is not re­strict­ed to a sin­gu­lar body, the EMA will con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and oth­er key stake­hold­ers as we work to­geth­er to man­age the scourge of noise pol­lu­tion,” the re­lease stat­ed. 

The EMA said it was cur­rent­ly re­view­ing its noise pol­lu­tion con­trol rules to strength­en ex­ist­ing pro­vi­sions. “Oth­er mea­sures are al­so be­ing ex­plored to in­crease the EMA’s mon­i­tor­ing and en­force­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ty.” 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the event at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain on Feb­ru­ary 26, 2019, was shut down al­most two hours ear­ly af­ter an of­fi­cial of the com­pa­ny, Khama Tay­lor-Phillip, was al­leged­ly re­peat­ed­ly warned that the event was ex­ceed­ing deci­bel lev­els set in a Noise Vari­a­tion grant­ed by the EMA.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed ruled that the EMA did not have the pow­er to take such ac­tion as the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act pre­scribes a pro­ce­dure for deal­ing with noise vari­a­tion vi­o­la­tions, which in­cludes is­su­ing a writ­ten warn­ing and ob­tain­ing an in­junc­tion. She al­so ruled that the po­lice did not have the pow­er un­der the Po­lice Ser­vice Act or Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act, as claimed.

“At best, those reme­dies in law au­tho­rised the said of­fi­cers to ar­rest, with­out a war­rant, any per­son at the event if they had rea­son­able and prob­a­ble cause to be­lieve that the said per­son had com­mit­ted the of­fence of a breach of the peace, a pub­lic nui­sance, or any oth­er crime or breach­es of law,” she said.

While they over­turned Jus­tice Mo­hammed’s rul­ing, Ap­pel­late Judges Al­lan Men­don­ca, Prakash Moo­sai, and Gillian Lucky agreed that the EMA did not have the pow­er to shut down the event. 

How­ev­er, they ruled that of­fi­cers from its en­vi­ron­men­tal po­lice unit had the ju­ris­dic­tion to do so un­der var­i­ous pieces of leg­is­la­tion that em­pow­er po­lice of­fi­cers “to abate the crime of pub­lic nui­sance.”

They ruled that the po­lice could pro­vide “im­me­di­ate re­lief” when there is a threat or ac­tu­al con­tra­ven­tion of the law by a noisy neigh­bour or an event. —Derek Achong