Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A po­lice of­fi­cer has lost his le­gal chal­lenge over be­ing re­tired on med­ical grounds af­ter he missed work for over a decade fol­low­ing a se­ri­ous job-re­lat­ed car ac­ci­dent.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad dis­missed a law­suit brought by for­mer cor­po­ral Duf­ferin Camp­bell against the Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found that the de­ci­sion tak­en by for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, based on find­ings of the Med­ical Board, could not be fault­ed.

“The Claimant was sub­ject­ed to the ex­am­i­na­tion by the Med­ical Board; he was found un­fit for fur­ther du­ty, and he nev­er chal­lenged the said find­ing,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

“As a con­se­quence, the Claimant was not re­tired from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) ar­bi­trar­i­ly, nor was he found un­fit for fur­ther du­ty based on some ubiq­ui­tous or capri­cious means,” he added.

Camp­bell en­list­ed in the TTPS in 1998 and was pro­mot­ed in 2011.

On Oc­to­ber 14, 2014, he was in­volved in a car ac­ci­dent while on du­ty and sus­tained se­ri­ous in­juries.

Camp­bell was placed on ex­tend­ed sick leave.

In March 2022, he was di­rect­ed to be ex­am­ined by the board, which found that he was left 30 per cent par­tial­ly per­ma­nent­ly dis­abled and rec­om­mend­ed that he was no longer fit for ser­vice.

In May 2024, Camp­bell had his lawyers send the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s Of­fice a le­gal let­ter af­ter he heard ru­mours that he was go­ing to be re­tired on med­ical grounds.

His sus­pi­cion was con­firmed in a re­sponse to his cor­re­spon­dence.

Camp­bell filed the case al­leg­ing that the de­ci­sion was un­law­ful as his writ­ten con­sent was not ob­tained be­fore ini­ti­at­ing the process.

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found that the Po­lice Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tions did not re­quire such ap­proval by an af­fect­ed of­fi­cer.

“It would be con­trary to good ad­min­is­tra­tion and out­side the am­bit of the leg­isla­tive in­tent for a re­quire­ment for the of­fi­cer’s con­sent to be im­plied in­to Reg­u­la­tion 34,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

“Such an im­pli­ca­tion would al­so be il­log­i­cal as no per­son would ever be in­clined to con­sent to a po­si­tion that is not sup­port­ive of one’s self-in­ter­est,” he added.

Al­though Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found that Camp­bell could not seek con­sti­tu­tion­al re­lief as he did not add the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to the case, he found that Camp­bell did not have such a valid claim un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion based on his mis­ap­pre­hen­sion over con­sent.

“Giv­en the fac­tu­al ma­trix in this case and mind­ful of the pur­port and ef­fect of Reg­u­la­tion 34, there was no ir­ra­tional, un­rea­son­able, fun­da­men­tal­ly un­fair or ar­bi­trary ex­er­cise of pow­er by the then com­mis­sion­er,” he said.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad crit­i­cised Camp­bell for fail­ing to raise an is­sue af­ter the board made its de­ci­sion.

“It ap­pears the Claimant was in a ‘sweet zone’ as he con­tin­ued to re­ceive re­mu­ner­a­tion al­though he was un­able to, and did not, work,” he said, as he sug­gest­ed that there is a wide­ly ac­cept­ed mis­con­cep­tion that the State has to pay in­jured em­ploy­ees un­til they at­tain re­tire­ment age.

How­ev­er, he was al­so crit­i­cal of the time it took for the TTPS to have Camp­bell ex­am­ined by the board.

“It can nev­er ac­cord with good ad­min­is­tra­tion to have of­fi­cers on sick/in­jury leave for sev­er­al years, and any such prac­tice needs to be cur­tailed,” he said.

“Hav­ing of­fi­cers on pro­longed pe­ri­ods of sick/in­jury leave which spans years, is un­ten­able, un­rea­son­ably tax­es the trea­sury, and has a neg­a­tive and po­ten­tial­ly de­bil­i­tat­ing im­pact up­on the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty,” he added.

As part of his de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered Camp­bell to pay the le­gal costs in­curred by the com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice for his un­mer­i­to­ri­ous case.

Camp­bell was rep­re­sent­ed by Ken­neth Thomp­son. Na­toya Moore-Bel­mar, Chelvi Ramkissoon, Sav­it­ri Ma­haraj and Chan­tal Cun­ning­ham rep­re­sent­ed the com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice.