sto­ries by Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Al­most a decade af­ter a truck crashed in­to their home, a moth­er and son from Mor­vant are set to re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion for the in­juries and loss­es they suf­fered.

High Court Judge Joan Charles or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for Yvette and Aquil Ram­sa­hai as she up­held their neg­li­gence law­suit against the dri­ver and the truck own­er late last week.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, the moth­er and son were at their home when the truck dri­ven by Den­zil Top­pin crashed in­to the front wall and the kitchen area on De­cem­ber 4, 2014.

The truck crashed in­to then-15-year-old Aquil, who was stand­ing in the front yard at the time, and he was pinned to a stand­pipe.

His moth­er on­ly sus­tained mi­nor in­juries, but the crash caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to the house.

The fam­i­ly was ren­dered tem­porar­i­ly home­less and had to live with friends and rel­a­tives while Aquil re­cov­ered from his in­juries. They claimed the ac­ci­dent neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed Aquil’s Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) re­sults the fol­low­ing year.

The fam­i­ly brought a neg­li­gence claim against Top­pin and An­tho­ny Rocke, who was the law­ful own­er of the ve­hi­cle.

Rocke filed an an­cil­lary claim against Ken­neth Gabriel, whom he claimed he sold the ve­hi­cle to and gave per­mis­sion to utilise the in­sur­ance pol­i­cy in his name.

Rocke claimed that Gabriel should be held li­able for the ac­ci­dent as he (Gabriel) per­mit­ted Top­pin to dri­ve the truck with­out his knowl­edge and per­mis­sion.

Gabriel did not de­fend the case, and a de­fault judg­ment, in­dem­ni­fy­ing Rocke, was en­tered against him.

In her judg­ment, Jus­tice Charles held Rocke vic­ar­i­ous­ly li­able for the ac­ci­dent.

She took is­sue with the fact that Rocke failed to pro­vide a writ­ten sale agree­ment for the truck or pay­ment re­ceipts from when Gabriel made month­ly in­stall­ments.

Jus­tice Charles al­so not­ed that when Rocke re­port­ed the ac­ci­dent to his in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, he was in­formed that he was in breach of his in­sur­ance pol­i­cy by al­low­ing Top­pin to dri­ve the ve­hi­cle. She point­ed out that Rocke nev­er of­fi­cial­ly chal­lenged the com­pa­ny’s po­si­tion.

How­ev­er, she dis­missed the fam­i­ly’s claim over Rocke breach­ing his statu­to­ry du­ty un­der the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle In­sur­ance (Third Par­ty Risks) Act by al­low­ing Top­pin to use the truck with­out be­ing cov­ered by its in­sur­ance.

Jus­tice Charles not­ed that the is­sue could not be raised in the civ­il law­suit as such was not pro­vid­ed un­der the leg­is­la­tion.

“I hold that the lan­guage of the Act does not con­fer any such right,” she said.

While she or­dered Rocke to pay the fam­i­ly com­pen­sa­tion for Aquil’s in­juries and the dam­age to their home, she did not quan­ti­fy the dam­ages, which will be as­sessed by a High Court Mas­ter lat­er to­day.

Based on Rocke’s an­cil­lary claim, Gabriel will have to re­im­burse Rocke for any com­pen­sa­tion he is even­tu­al­ly or­dered to pay.

The moth­er and son were rep­re­sent­ed by Yaseen Ahmed and Tara Lutch­man. Rocke was rep­re­sent­ed by Lemuel Mur­phy and Keishel Grant.