PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Court of Ap­peal of Trinidad and To­ba­go has ruled that Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd (RBL) ex­er­cised rea­son­able care in re­la­tion to a mat­ter in­volv­ing its for­mer em­ploy­ee Cur­tis Mathu­ra.

In a judge­ment on Thurs­day, Jus­tices of Ap­peal Mark Mo­hammed, Maria Wil­son and Ricky Rahim over­turned the High Court’s ear­li­er find­ing of neg­li­gence in a mat­ter which stemmed from a 2022 break-in at Re­pub­lic Bank’s Cou­va Branch.

Be­tween May 29 and 30, 2022, in­trud­ers drilled a hole through a wall of the bank and ac­cessed sev­er­al safe­ty de­posit box­es, in­clud­ing that of Mathu­ra’s.

Mathu­ra, who had been worked at RBL for near­ly 31 years be­fore re­tir­ing, brought le­gal pro­ceed­ings against the Bank for dam­ages for his loss­es, al­leg­ing neg­li­gence and breach of con­tract in re­la­tion to the se­cu­ri­ty of the Bank’s safe de­posit fa­cil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the Bank fol­low­ing the rul­ing, “Fol­low­ing a de­tailed re­view of the ev­i­dence, the Court of Ap­peal de­ter­mined that Re­pub­lic Bank im­ple­ment­ed com­pre­hen­sive se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures at the Cou­va Branch demon­strat­ing its ef­fort to ex­er­cise rea­son­able care.

“The Court al­so de­ter­mined that Re­pub­lic Bank’s em­ploy­ees ex­er­cised the ex­pect­ed or­di­nary care in op­er­at­ing the Bank’s se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems and se­cur­ing the premis­es, and that there was no ev­i­dence of neg­li­gence on their part.

“The judg­ment high­light­ed that the law re­quires rea­son­able care and not in­fal­li­bil­i­ty. Ac­cord­ing­ly, the Court of Ap­peal con­clud­ed that the Bank had met the ap­plic­a­ble le­gal stan­dard. It fur­ther or­dered that Re­pub­lic Bank re­cov­er its pre­scribed costs in the High Court and two-thirds of those pre­scribed costs in re­spect of the ap­peal.”

Fol­low­ing the rul­ing Pres­i­dent and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank, Nigel Bap­tiste said “We wel­come the Court of Ap­peal’s de­ci­sion, which con­firms that Re­pub­lic Bank ex­er­cised rea­son­able care in re­la­tion to the op­er­a­tion of our em­ploy­ee pro­ce­dures and se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems. While the events at our Cou­va Branch in 2022 were re­gret­table, the Court has af­firmed that the Bank act­ed re­spon­si­bly and dili­gent­ly in the cir­cum­stances.”

Bap­tiste said “Pro­tect­ing our cus­tomers, em­ploy­ees and as­sets has and con­tin­ues to be fun­da­men­tal to our op­er­a­tions. Our cus­tomers can be as­sured that we re­main com­mit­ted to serv­ing re­spon­si­bly and do­ing all that we can to main­tain the trust and con­fi­dence they have placed in us.”

In Oc­to­ber 2024, Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in had ruled in favour of Mathu­ra, find­ing that the bank’s se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems fell be­low the re­quired stan­dard of care af­ter he lost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $300,000 in jew­ellery and for­eign cur­ren­cy stored in his safe­ty de­posit box.

Mathu­ra’s at­tor­neys have in­di­cat­ed they wish to take the mat­ter to the Privy Coun­cil.