A fu­ner­al home has been or­dered to pay over $800,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a for­mer em­ploy­ee, who se­ri­ous­ly in­jured his back while lift­ing heavy bod­ies sev­er­al years ago. 

High Court Judge Ricky Rahim or­dered com­pen­sa­tion for Har­dath Maraj as he up­held his neg­li­gence case against Simp­sons Memo­r­i­al Lim­it­ed, last Fri­day. 

Maraj was em­ployed as a dri­ver/handy­man in 2015. 

He claimed that he first in­jured his back in June 2017, when he and a col­league were lift­ing the body of a de­ceased per­son, who weighed in ex­cess of 200 pounds, and his co-work­er dropped the body forc­ing him to bear the full weight. 

He claimed that al­though he felt a se­vere and sharp pain in his low­er back he con­tin­ued to work. 

Maraj claimed that in late De­cem­ber 2020, he felt a sim­i­lar pain in his back while lift­ing an­oth­er heavy body and fell down. 

Maraj was pro­vid­ed sick leave af­ter the sec­ond in­ci­dent. When he re­turned to work he was as­signed to the night shift but re­fused as he claimed that he had an­oth­er job dur­ing the time pe­ri­od. 

He then stopped show­ing up for work as he cit­ed his back in­jury. 

Maraj on­ly re­vealed de­tails of the two in­ci­dents when he was called to a meet­ing to dis­cuss his ab­sence from work in March 2021. 

In his law­suit, Maraj claimed that the com­pa­ny was neg­li­gent as it failed to take all rea­son­able steps to en­sure his safe­ty while on du­ty. 

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Rahim ruled that the 2017 in­jury oc­curred de­spite it not be­ing ini­tial­ly re­port­ed by Maraj. 

"The court finds there to be more than am­ple ev­i­dence that makes it more like­ly than not that the first in­ci­dent in 2017 in fact oc­curred and that Maraj is not mak­ing it up," he said. 

He al­so up­held his claim that he was asked to move a body by him­self de­spite cit­ing his pre­vi­ous in­jury in 2020. 

Jus­tice Rahim ruled that the com­pa­ny was neg­li­gent in ex­pos­ing Maraj to dam­age or in­jury and fail­ing to have co-work­ers as­sist him af­ter the first in­ci­dent. He al­so found that the com­pa­ny failed to pro­vide suf­fi­cient safe­ty equip­ment in­clud­ing back and arm braces and man­u­al lift­ing tools. 

In de­cid­ing on the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion for Maraj, Jus­tice Rahim not­ed that he was deemed 35 per cent per­ma­nent­ly par­tial­ly dis­abled due to his back in­jury. 

Maraj was award­ed $250,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages. 

The bulk of the com­pen­sa­tion or­dered by Jus­tice Rahim stemmed from Maraj's claim for fu­ture loss of earn­ings. He was not award­ed for loss of earn­ings dur­ing the pe­ri­od he stayed away from work as he ad­mit­ted that he had an­oth­er job that did not re­quire heavy lift­ing dur­ing that pe­ri­od. 

Jus­tice Rahim as­sessed it at $528,586.50 which was based on Maraj's salary less ex­pens­es for 10 years. 

The com­pa­ny was al­so or­dered to pay Maraj's le­gal costs for the law­suit. 

Maraj was rep­re­sent­ed by Shawn Roop­nar­ine, and Ravi Pheerangee. The com­pa­ny was rep­re­sent­ed by Pamela El­der, SC, and Richard Thomas.