sto­ries by DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke has failed in yet an­oth­er at­tempt to have the union pay him a pen­sion while he pur­sues a law­suit over its re­fusal to pay it.

De­liv­er­ing a rul­ing on Mon­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Vasheist Kokaram and Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well agreed that a col­league cor­rect­ly re­fused to grant Duke an in­junc­tion last year.

In June, last year, Duke filed a law­suit con­tend­ing that the union breached his em­ploy­ment con­tract by fail­ing to pay his al­leged­ly le­git­i­mate pen­sion af­ter he re­signed from the post in De­cem­ber 2021 in or­der to ful­fil his short-lived role as To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) deputy chief sec­re­tary.

Duke sought an in­junc­tion as he claimed that he is suf­fer­ing ex­treme fi­nan­cial hard­ship in­clud­ing miss­ing mort­gage pay­ments and ac­cu­mu­lat­ing a $130,000 cred­it card debt.

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad con­sid­ered the ap­pli­ca­tion with­out the union’s in­put and grant­ed the in­junc­tion on June 28.

The union ap­plied to set it aside based on Duke not dis­clos­ing that he could be dis-en­ti­tled to a pen­sion from the PSA due to his res­ig­na­tion and be­cause he al­ready opt­ed to even­tu­al­ly col­lect a pen­sion from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Its lawyers Dou­glas Mendes, SC, and Kelvin Ramkissoon al­so con­tend­ed that he failed to dis­close that he re­ceived a $203,850 gra­tu­ity from the PSA in March 2023.

Its ap­pli­ca­tion was sub­se­quent­ly grant­ed by Jus­tice Maris­sa Robert­son lead­ing to the ap­peal.

In re­view­ing the de­ci­sion, the ap­peal pan­el ruled that al­though she made mi­nor er­rors in con­sid­er­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion, her de­ci­sion to grant it could not be fault­ed.

“Over­all, the Tri­al Judge’s find­ing that, on a bal­ance of jus­tice, the Re­spon­dent (PSA) would suf­fer some ir­re­me­di­a­ble fi­nan­cial harm should the in­junc­tion be grant­ed was not plain­ly wrong,” Jus­tice Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well said, as she not­ed that it would be un­like­ly that Duke would be able to re­im­burse the union if he even­tu­al­ly los­es his sub­stan­tive case.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Judge cor­rect­ly weighed this in the bal­ance with the fact that the Ap­pel­lant’s chance of suc­cess in prov­ing the mer­its of his case is not at the lev­el of strength re­quired for an in­ter­im pay­ment or­der,” she added.

How­ev­er, she ruled that her col­league was wrong to or­der Duke to pay the $18,875.00, he re­ceived af­ter Jus­tice Seep­er­sad’s or­der and be­fore her re­ver­sal of it, in­to court.

She not­ed that the PSA did not re­quest such in its ap­pli­ca­tion and the judge did not ex­plain her ra­tio­nale for in­clud­ing it.