Sto­ries by Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty pol­i­cy, pre­vent­ing all trans­ac­tions in re­la­tion to a ve­hi­cle un­til traf­fic tick­ets is­sued to au­tho­rised users are paid, has been deemed il­le­gal and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

High Court Judge Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams gave the de­c­la­ra­tion late last month when she up­held a case filed by au­to body me­chan­ic Neil Thomas against Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. She gave writ­ten rea­sons for her de­ci­sion in a 21-page judg­ment on Mon­day.

In his law­suit, Thomas claimed the is­sue arose af­ter he pur­chased a Nis­san Wingroad from a woman in Ju­ly,2022.

Af­ter pay­ing $30,000 to the woman, they went to the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty’s of­fice at Wright­son Road in Port-of-Spain to trans­fer the ve­hi­cle. A li­cens­ing of­fi­cer in­spect­ed the ve­hi­cle’s en­gine and chas­sis num­bers be­fore ver­bal­ly ap­prov­ing the trans­ac­tion.

On Feb­ru­ary 13 last year, Thomas was drop­ping his daugh­ter to school in El Do­ra­do when he re­ceived a fixed penal­ty traf­fic tick­et from a traf­fic war­den for us­ing his cell­phone while dri­ving.

When Thomas sought to have his ve­hi­cle in­spect­ed at a pri­vate garage the fol­low­ing month, he was told that he could not do so un­til a $1,000 tick­et linked to the ve­hi­cle was paid. Af­ter ex­plain­ing that he had al­ready paid the tick­et he re­ceived, the ve­hi­cle in­spec­tor told him it was not is­sued to him or the pre­vi­ous own­er but to a third par­ty.

Thomas con­firmed the in­for­ma­tion through the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port on­line data­base and sought to con­tact the dri­ver who re­ceived the tick­et. The dri­ver ad­vised him of the pur­port­ed pol­i­cy and ad­vised that he pay the fine quick­ly as it would in­crease the longer it re­mained un­paid. He then con­tact­ed the au­thor­i­ty, which in­formed him that the fine now stood at $1,500.

Af­ter his lawyers, led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, threat­ened to file a law­suit over the pol­i­cy, the min­istry’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary wrote to him apol­o­gis­ing for what tran­spired and ad­vised that he could have his ve­hi­cle in­spect­ed at any in­spec­tion sta­tion.

In the law­suit, the de­fen­dants ad­mit­ted that the pol­i­cy was wrong­ly ap­plied to Thomas, as they claimed that it is on­ly valid if the ve­hi­cle was not trans­ferred be­fore it sought to en­force the un­paid tick­et. In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams con­sid­ered the sce­nar­ios for is­su­ing a tick­et un­der the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle and Road Traf­fic Act. She not­ed that the tick­et could ei­ther be is­sued to an er­rant user of the ve­hi­cle or af­fixed to the ve­hi­cle.

Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams ruled that Sec­tion 88(A)(3) of the leg­is­la­tion, which pre­scribed the sanc­tion, could on­ly be ap­plied if the own­er of the ve­hi­cle re­ceived the tick­et or if it (the tick­et) was af­fixed to the ve­hi­cle.

“The own­er must be the of­fend­er to be li­able for the traf­fic vi­o­la­tion,” she said, as she not­ed that a dri­ver who fails to pay their fine could have their dri­ver’s per­mit sus­pend­ed as a sanc­tion.

She al­so not­ed that an un­paid traf­fic tick­et could on­ly have an ef­fect on the ve­hi­cle that was used when it was is­sued.

“For in­stance, where the dri­ver or own­er has oth­er ve­hi­cles reg­is­tered in their name and those ve­hi­cles were not in­volved in the com­mis­sion of the traf­fic vi­o­la­tion, no sanc­tions can be at­tached to those ve­hi­cles,” she said.

“To al­low the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty to de­cide what prop­er­ty—oth­er than that in­volved in the traf­fic vi­o­la­tion—would go be­yond the ex­er­cise of an ad­min­is­tra­tive au­thor­i­ty to aid the en­force­ment of the act,” she added.

Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams is­sued a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the pol­i­cy in­clud­ing that Thomas’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to not be de­prived of his prop­er­ty ex­cept by due process of law, and to equal­i­ty be­fore and pro­tec­tion of the law had been in­fringed. She al­so ruled that the pol­i­cy ap­plied in the case was un­fair, il­le­gal and ir­ra­tional.

Deal­ing with com­pen­sa­tion for Thomas, Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams stat­ed that $12,600 would suf­fice with the de­c­la­ra­tions grant­ed.

“The court did not find any ag­gra­vat­ing fac­tors. Rather the po­ten­tial dam­ages were mit­i­gat­ed based on the ra­pid­i­ty with which the de­fen­dants cor­rect­ed their er­ror and ad­mit­ted the wrong,” she said.

She al­so point­ed out the pol­i­cy, in­tro­duced by an amend­ment to the leg­is­la­tion in 2017, was rel­a­tive­ly new when it was un­fair­ly ap­plied to Thomas.

“The in­tro­duc­tion of an en­tire­ly new sys­tem geared to­wards im­prov­ing the en­force­ment of traf­fic of­fences with the ul­ti­mate goal of re­duc­ing traf­fic vi­o­la­tions is one that ought to be ap­plaud­ed,” she said. The State was al­so or­dered to pay Thomas’ le­gal costs for the law­suit.

Thomas was rep­re­sent­ed by Kent Sam­lal, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Natasha Bis­ram, Robert Ab­dool-Mitchell, and Vishaal Siewsaran.