A for­mer mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cer has re­ceived the green light to con­tin­ue his law­suit against the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion over a de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate his em­ploy­ment.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion on Mon­day, High Court Judge Karen Reid dis­missed an ap­pli­ca­tion from the cor­po­ra­tion to strike out Arnold Pin­to's case at a pre­lim­i­nary stage.

Jus­tice Reid re­ject­ed the cor­po­ra­tion's claims over de­fi­cien­cies in Pin­to's case.

She said: "I find the ar­gu­ments of the De­fen­dant (the cor­po­ra­tion) to be com­plete­ly with­out mer­it and its ap­pli­ca­tion ought con­se­quent­ly to be dis­missed."

Pin­to was ap­point­ed as a po­lice con­sta­ble by the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (SASC) in De­cem­ber 2003 and was as­signed to the Ari­ma Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion.

In Feb­ru­ary 2016, Pin­to was in­jured in a car ac­ci­dent.

He sub­mit­ted sick leave and work­men's com­pen­sa­tion ap­pli­ca­tions but was de­nied as the cor­po­ra­tion dis­put­ed whether he was on du­ty at the time of the ac­ci­dent.

The cor­po­ra­tion al­so called up­on him to sub­mit med­icals so he would not be con­sid­ered to have aban­doned his du­ty dur­ing his pe­ri­od away from work.

In Au­gust 2016, Pin­to was charged with dan­ger­ous dri­ving but the charge was dis­missed short­ly there­after.

Even with the dis­missal of the charge, Pin­to was re­lieved of of­fi­cial dri­ving du­ties and his month­ly dri­ving al­lowance was stopped.

In late 2016, he at­tempt­ed to sub­mit a sick leave for one month af­ter he was di­ag­nosed with de­pres­sion but was pre­vent­ed from do­ing so.

Al­most a year lat­er, the cor­po­ra­tion re­quest­ed that he be as­sessed by the Med­ical Board, which ruled that he was fit for du­ty on a per­ma­nent ba­sis.

Pin­to claimed that he suf­fered var­i­ous acts of vic­tim­i­sa­tion af­ter re­sum­ing du­ty in Au­gust 2018 in­clud­ing be­ing struck by an­oth­er of­fi­cer's ve­hi­cle.

He claimed that on Christ­mas Eve in 2018, he was told he was not al­lowed to re­port for du­ty.

He com­plied and ad­mit­ted that he con­tin­ued to re­ceive his salary un­til Au­gust 2019.

Pin­to's lawyers led by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh wrote to the SASC ques­tion­ing his ter­mi­na­tion and it claimed that it did not take the ac­tion as it was not his em­ploy­er.

Pin­to filed a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

In Jan­u­ary, last year, Jus­tice Reid stopped the case against the AG's Of­fice and sub­sti­tut­ed the cor­po­ra­tion as the de­fen­dant.

In its re­cent ap­pli­ca­tion, the cor­po­ra­tion claimed that the le­gal ac­tion should have been di­rect­ed at the SASC as it did not reg­u­late the terms and con­di­tions of his em­ploy­ment and did not have the ju­ris­dic­tion to ter­mi­nate his em­ploy­ment.

It al­so claimed that the case was filed out­side of the four-year lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od for do­ing so.

In her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Reid not­ed that the cor­po­ra­tion re­mained Pin­to's em­ploy­er de­spite the role of the SASC.

"The fact that the terms and con­di­tions of the Claimant's em­ploy­ment are con­tained in an Act of Par­lia­ment or part­ly in reg­u­la­tions pro­mul­gat­ed by the SASC, as is done by every oth­er in­de­pen­dent ser­vice com­mis­sion in this ju­ris­dic­tion, does not change that po­si­tion," Jus­tice Reid said.

She al­so ruled that the case was not filed out­side the lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od as it was brought with­in four years of his salary be­ing stopped.

Pin­to was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ste­fan Ramkissoon, and Kristy Mo­han. The cor­po­ra­tion was rep­re­sent­ed by Farai Hove-Ma­sai­sai, Christo­pher George, and Bernelle-Joy La-Fou­cade.