Joshua Seemu­n­gal

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

More than $37 mil­lion of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey was spent on le­gal fees by Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) in the past six years to de­fend claims filed by vic­tims of med­ical neg­li­gence and oth­er mat­ters.

This was re­vealed by the Min­istry of Health in re­sponse to a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act ap­pli­ca­tion filed by blog­ger and UNC ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj on Jan­u­ary 25, 2022.

The ap­pli­ca­tion was filed through his at­tor­neys at Free­dom Law Cham­bers, led by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC.

Attorney Anand Ramlogan.

The spread­sheet, ob­tained through the FOIA re­quest, re­vealed the to­tal amount of fees paid to each at­tor­ney for the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber 2015 to De­cem­ber 2021. Sev­er­al at­tor­neys, among them some promi­nent names, raked in mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar briefs.

Of the to­tal of more than $37 mil­lion paid in le­gal fees by the Health Min­istry, Mr Charles Law re­ceived the most briefs, a to­tal of 41 cas­es. He was paid $8,820,247.64.

WASA Chair­man and at­tor­ney Ravin­dra Nan­ga over­saw 33 cas­es, earn­ing more than $4.8 mil­lion be­tween 2017 to 2021.

One of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ke­ity­Row­ley’s at­tor­neys Justin Phelps re­ceived $ 3,887,907.41 for 13 briefs.

For­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion mem­ber and at­tor­ney Roger Kawals­ingh han­dled 39 cas­es, earn­ing more than $3.6 mil­lion.

Roger Kawalsingh

TRINIDAD GUARDIAN

Kawals­ingh was, of course, the sub­ject of pub­lic scruti­ny last year af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley crit­i­cised him for copy­ing for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith in an email.

The email con­tained sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion about an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to pos­si­ble cor­rup­tion in the grant­i­ng of le­gal firearm user li­cences dur­ing Grif­fith’s tenure. The at­tor­ney claimed that he copied Grif­fith in er­ror. To date, no ac­tion has been tak­en against him.

Kawals­ingh is al­so in­volved in a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion af­ter he pur­chased a Porsche from for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, who is ac­cused of fail­ing to trans­fer the ve­hi­cle to Kawals­ingh’s name.

Ravi Mungals­ingh, who nor­mal­ly acts as Kawals­ingh's in­struct­ing at­tor­ney, was paid $2,574,532.68 for 16 mat­ters.

De­vesh Ma­haraj and As­so­ciates was paid $1,587,135.68 for ten briefs.

Pol­lon­ais, Blanc, de la Bastide and Jacelon re­ceived $1,708,231.74 for 24 briefs.

At­tor­ney Kevin Ramkissoon was paid $ 1,055,047 for 13 mat­ters.

Sush­ma Goopeesingh was paid $1,146,814.40 for 12 mat­ters.

Chair­man of Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed Michael Quam­i­na earned $167,000 from one case.

Pay­ments were al­so made to some promi­nent names as­so­ci­at­ed with the Gov­ern­ment.

The law firms of gov­ern­ment mem­bers and at­tor­neys who are close rel­a­tives of gov­ern­ment mem­bers earned at least $681,600 in le­gal fees from the Health Min­istry since Sep­tem­ber 2015.

The law firm of the wife of the for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al and cur­rent Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment–Al-Rawi, Haynes-Soo Hon and Com­pa­ny–was re­tained by the Health Min­istry for eight mat­ters since 2019, re­ceiv­ing $99,250.25 in to­tal.

Al-Rawi’s re­place­ment as at­tor­ney gen­er­al, Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC was re­tained for one mat­ter in 2018, earn­ing him $39,937.50.

Ker­win Gar­cia, the hus­band of the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, was re­tained for two mat­ters, earn­ing him $392,048.28 be­tween 2018 and 2019.

The law firm Hinds and Com­pa­ny earned $80,424.26 from the Health Min­istry in two sep­a­rate pay­ments for one mat­ter. Mar­garet Hinds, the wife of Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds, was re­tained for two mat­ters. She re­ceived $70,000 in 2016 and an un­known amount in 2018.

Ravi Balgobin Maharaj

Min­istry dis­tances it­self

The Min­istry of Health sought to dis­tance it­self from the ex­or­bi­tant pay­ments of le­gal fees.

In a let­ter dat­ed March 31, 2022, the Act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Health said, “…it re­mains a mat­ter for the gov­ern­ing au­thor­i­ties of each pub­lic au­thor­i­ty to de­cide its at­tor­ney of choice. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly so in nov­el or com­plex mat­ters and the Au­thor­i­ty can­not be sub­ject to crit­i­cism for seek­ing the ad­vice of any ex­ter­nal coun­sel. Line min­istries are not re­quired nor is it good prac­tice to mi­cro­man­age the af­fairs of the var­i­ous pub­lic au­thor­i­ties which fall with­in their re­mit.

The min­istry added that “The gov­ern­ing au­thor­i­ty of each pub­lic au­thor­i­ty has a du­ty to act in the best in­ter­ests of the Au­thor­i­ty and this ex­tends to the re­ten­tion of ex­ter­nal le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Fur­ther­more, a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty should be able to ob­tain free and frank ad­vice and be able to give full in­for­ma­tion to its le­gal ad­vis­ers, in­clud­ing mat­ters that would oth­er­wise ad­verse­ly af­fect the pub­lic au­thor­i­ty's po­si­tion.”

Attorney Justin Phelps

Al-Rawi se­lect­ed RHA lawyers

Be­tween 2015 to Feb­ru­ary 2019, for­mer AG Al-Rawi se­lect­ed ex­ter­nal coun­sel for the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties. The re­sponse from the Health Min­istry stat­ed: “The AGLA will con­sid­er the re­quest and de­cide whether the mat­ter war­rants ex­ter­nal at­tor­neys, in-house AGLA at­tor­neys or both. There­after, the min­istry will be ad­vised by the AGLA of the at­tor­neys that will rep­re­sent them in the re­spec­tive mat­ters and the min­istry will com­mu­ni­cate the same to the pub­lic au­thor­i­ties.”

The rev­e­la­tion that Al-Rawi was re­spon­si­ble for se­lect­ing ex­ter­nal coun­sel for the RHAs to hire has raised se­ri­ous con­cerns.

Af­ter Feb­ru­ary 2019, Al-Rawi al­lowed the RHAs to se­lect its own coun­sel as he sought to fend off an­tic­i­pat­ed pub­lic crit­i­cisms about the same at­tor­neys be­ing used in so many dif­fer­ent mat­ters.

Al-Rawi’s re­la­tion­ship with Kawals­ingh has been the sub­ject of much crit­i­cism af­ter he at­tend­ed Kawals­ingh's daugh­ter’s birth­day par­ty at his pri­vate res­i­dence in Mara­bel­la in the com­pa­ny of Gary Grif­fith.

Kawals­ingh was sub­se­quent­ly ap­point­ed as a mem­ber of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. He is al­so the at­tor­ney for Vin­cent Nel­son, QC who was giv­en a con­tro­ver­sial in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment by Al-Rawi.

Katherine Akum Lumi

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Vic­tim: They make mil­lions while I suf­fer

Fifty-four-year-old Kather­ine Akum Lum, a vic­tim of med­ical neg­li­gence, has suf­fered unimag­in­able pain and an­guish since her pelvic area was washed with lye af­ter a hys­terec­to­my in June 2019 at the St James Med­ical Com­plex.

Bedrid­den for sev­er­al years and with tubes at­tached to her, she was left with ex­ten­sive in­ter­nal dam­age, re­quir­ing mul­ti­ple surg­eries.

"It's a tremen­dous amount of pain to go through. I'm al­ways in pain. The men­tal toll is just as bad as the phys­i­cal. The suf­fer­ing is tremen­dous," she said.

How­ev­er, the news about how much the law firms and at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty against her in their le­gal mat­ter makes her an­gry.

“I am so an­gry to see this par­tic­u­lar at­tor­ney and law firm (names them) get­ting all these mil­lions of dol­lars be­cause they are the ones the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty hired against me in my case (civ­il suit). I would like to know how much mon­ey they get­ting to de­fend this hor­ri­ble wrong.

"Since I went pub­lic with my sto­ry, many peo­ple have come for­ward to tell me about their sto­ries that hap­pened in the hos­pi­tal. These are or­di­nary peo­ple who the RHAs are fight­ing in court, while lawyers are be­ing paid mil­lions of dol­lars and laugh­ing all the way to the bank."

She be­lieved that it's ul­ti­mate­ly or­di­nary peo­ple who are left to suf­fer as they hope and pray for jus­tice.

And jus­tice, she said, is not an easy thing to at­tain, es­pe­cial­ly for peo­ple with­out deep pock­ets.

"If you are a vic­tim, you can­not even get a doc­tor to tes­ti­fy on your be­half. They will tell you that there was neg­li­gence but they refuse to tes­ti­fy against their col­league in court. So what are we sup­posed to do?" She asked.

"Why don't the RHAs set up an in­de­pen­dent team of doc­tors to eval­u­ate med­ical neg­li­gence in these cas­es and set­tle them if they are at fault?"

Akum Lum is su­ing the NWRHA for med­ical neg­li­gence.

She is one of sev­er­al peo­ple su­ing RHAs for in­juries caused by med­ical neg­li­gence.