Derek Achong

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and sev­er­al of its past and cur­rent ex­ec­u­tives will have to con­tin­ue to de­fend a bid by some mem­bers to hold them in con­tempt of court for al­leged­ly breach­ing a three-year court or­der.

In an oral rul­ing yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad re­ject­ed a pre­lim­i­nary chal­lenge to the con­tempt ap­pli­ca­tion, brought by the PSA.

In the chal­lenge, the PSA’s lawyers claimed that the dis­grun­tled mem­bers should not be al­lowed to pur­sue the ap­pli­ca­tion as they failed to no­ti­fy the union of the al­leged breach­es be­fore pur­su­ing the course of ac­tion.

The trade union al­so ques­tioned mem­bers’ de­lay in tak­ing the ac­tion af­ter Jus­tice Ram­per­sad is­sued the or­ders in ear­ly 2020, as he ruled in a law­suit over PSA’s han­dling of elec­tions for rep­re­sen­ta­tives of its var­i­ous sec­tions.

In his de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad dis­pensed with the re­quire­ment to serve the PSA with the no­tice based on the cir­cum­stances of the case. He al­so re­ject­ed the com­plaints over the de­lay as he not­ed that the pe­ri­od did not ren­der his pre­vi­ous or­ders un­en­force­able.

If the PSA had been suc­cess­ful in its chal­lenge, it would have meant the dis­charg­ing of an in­junc­tion freez­ing the union’s as­sets, which was grant­ed by High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad af­ter the con­tempt ap­pli­ca­tion was filed in De­cem­ber. a

While the in­junc­tion will stay in place pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the ap­pli­ca­tion, the par­ties are sched­uled to reap­pear be­fore Jus­tice Ram­per­sad lat­er this week for him to clar­i­fy as­pects re­lat­ed to the union’s op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es, which it claimed were not clear and caus­ing con­fu­sion with its bankers.

In ap­ply­ing for the in­junc­tion, the group of mem­bers claimed that if not grant­ed, the PSA and its cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive would de­prive un­rep­re­sent­ed sec­tions of their rights un­der the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s con­sti­tu­tion and would con­tin­ue to dis­si­pate as­sets.

The mem­bers are Cur­tis Cuffie, Demetrius Har­ri­son, An­nisha Per­sad, Cur­tis Meade, and Du­aine He­witt.

Un­der the in­junc­tion, the de­fen­dants, in­clud­ing for­mer PSA Pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke, were pre­vent­ed from dis­pos­ing of or deal­ing with or di­min­ish­ing the val­ue of any of the PSA’s as­sets.

The in­junc­tion ap­plies to all of the union’s as­sets, in­clud­ing ac­counts at RBC, JMMB, Re­pub­lic Bank, Sco­tia­bank, Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion, Trin­to­plan In­vest­ment, and Plipde­co, as well as four ve­hi­cles.

The PSA mem­bers are rep­re­sent­ed by Raisa Cae­sar and Tekani Trim, while Ra­jiv Per­sad, John Heath, and Li­onel Luck­hoo rep­re­sent­ed the PSA.

Sco­tia­bank was rep­re­sent­ed by Jean-Louis Kel­ly.