Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A High Court judge has or­dered the State to re­turn a busi­ness­man’s li­cenced firearm and am­mu­ni­tion and pay com­pen­sa­tion, more than a decade af­ter they were ac­ci­den­tal­ly left at a restau­rant and tak­en in­to po­lice cus­tody with­out ex­pla­na­tion.

The rul­ing was de­liv­ered by Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad in a claim brought by a Cen­tral con­trac­tor, who sued for det­inue and con­ver­sion af­ter po­lice failed to re­turn his firearm de­spite re­peat­ed re­quests and the dis­missal of crim­i­nal charges against him.

The claimant was at a food es­tab­lish­ment in Freeport on March 18, 2014, when he in­ad­ver­tent­ly left a pouch con­tain­ing his Glock 19C firearm, am­mu­ni­tion, Firearm User’s Li­cence and oth­er doc­u­ments on a chair.

The pro­pri­etor found the bag and re­port­ed it to the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion. Of­fi­cers took pos­ses­sion of the firearm and am­mu­ni­tion and sub­se­quent­ly charged the claimant with loss of a pis­tol through neg­li­gence and loss of am­mu­ni­tion through neg­li­gence.

On Jan­u­ary 12, 2017, af­ter a full tri­al, the charges were dis­missed by Se­nior Mag­is­trate Cher­ril Anne An­toine. How­ev­er, the State failed to re­turn the firearm and am­mu­ni­tion and pro­vid­ed no ex­pla­na­tion for not re­turn­ing the prop­er­ty. A pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter was sent to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in Sep­tem­ber 2023, fol­lowed by mul­ti­ple let­ters up to March 2024.

Through his at­tor­neys, Ramesh Deena, in­struct­ed by Chris­t­ian Deena, the claimant filed a law­suit on Au­gust 7, 2024, against a po­lice of­fi­cer, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

The claim against the first two de­fen­dants was struck out.

Up­hold­ing the claimant’s ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s de­fence, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad not­ed that the de­fence ar­gued the ini­tial de­ten­tion was law­ful and that there was nev­er an “ac­tu­al re­fusal” to re­turn the items. How­ev­er, the de­fence pro­vid­ed no ex­pla­na­tion for the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion and in­stead chal­lenged the claim on tech­ni­cal grounds.

Re­ject­ing this, the judge found that the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion was un­law­ful.

“To al­low this case to go to full tri­al in a sit­u­a­tion where the de­fence fails to pro­vide a prop­er de­fence or ex­pla­na­tion for the fail­ure to re­turn the claimant’s items is an abuse of the court’s process and an un­nec­es­sary bur­den on the court’s lim­it­ed re­sources and those of the par­ties as well. The is­sue for de­ter­mi­na­tion re­al­ly boils down to a le­git­i­mate rea­son for the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion of the items, and the plead­ing on be­half of the third de­fen­dant pro­vides ab­solute­ly none. The court there­fore has no hes­i­ta­tion in strik­ing out the de­fence and grant­i­ng judg­ment to the claimant.”

The court or­dered the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Dernisha Duke, in­struct­ed by Claire Thomas-Med­i­na, to re­turn the claimant’s firearm and am­mu­ni­tion and to pay dam­ages for det­inue from Jan­u­ary 8, 2024, to the date of their re­turn.