DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Court of Ap­peal has re­duced the com­pen­sa­tion that a cook­ing gas dis­trib­u­tor was or­dered to pay to the own­er of a shop­ping com­plex in Mar­aval for a gas ex­plo­sion in 2015, which claimed the life of one man and left sev­er­al oth­ers in­jured. 

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment yes­ter­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar, Maria Wil­son, and Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh re­duced the $600,000 in com­pen­sa­tion North Plant LPG Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Ltd was or­dered to pay Con­ti­nen­tal Cor­po­ra­tion Ltd to $50,000. 

The law­suit re­lates to an ex­plo­sion that oc­curred at Con­ti­nen­tal’s Roy­al Palm Plaza at 10.35 am on Feb­ru­ary 5, 2015. 

In to­tal, a dozen cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees of El Pecos Grill restau­rant were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured. 

Four months lat­er, one of the vic­tims, John Soo Ping Chow suc­cumbed to his in­juries at the Jack­son Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal in Mi­a­mi, Flori­da.

A fire in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­port from the T&T Fire Ser­vice sug­gest­ed that there was a gas leak in the de­liv­ery line of the North Plant LPG’s truck. 

How­ev­er, the re­port deemed the ex­plo­sion as ac­ci­den­tal as it stat­ed: “The most prob­a­ble cause of the fire was as a re­sult of ig­ni­tion to a mix­ture of LPG and air, with­in the rear pas­sage­way near the El Pecos LPG cylin­ders.”

In 2020, Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams up­held Con­ti­nen­tal’s neg­li­gence law­suit against North Plant LPG. 

While Con­ti­nen­tal claimed $2.1 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion to cov­er the dam­age to its build­ing and loss of rent while it was be­ing re­paired, Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams on­ly or­dered $600,000 in nom­i­nal dam­ages as she ruled that the com­pa­ny had failed to pro­vide spe­cif­ic de­tails of its loss­es as re­quired. 

In de­ter­min­ing the ap­peal, Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh ruled that the tri­al judge was cor­rect to hold North Plant LPG li­able for neg­li­gence large­ly based on the fail­ure of its truck dri­ver to in­form El Pecos’ staff to switch off their ig­ni­tion points in the kitchen be­fore he be­gan fill­ing its gas cylin­ders. 

Deal­ing with the com­pen­sa­tion or­dered, Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh not­ed that while Con­ti­nen­tal suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant loss­es it did not chal­lenge the judge’s de­ci­sion to dis­miss its claim for sig­nif­i­cant spe­cial dam­ages due to a lack of ev­i­dence of loss. 

“Un­less a claim for spe­cial dam­ages is prop­er­ly proved there would be a dan­ger of com­pen­sat­ing a claimant for loss­es which were not ac­tu­al­ly sus­tained, a po­si­tion which is un­fair to the pay­ing de­fen­dant,” he said. 

Rul­ing that the nom­i­nal dam­ages awards were too high, Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh sought to re­it­er­ate the pur­pose of such com­pen­sa­tion.