A cou­ple from St Joseph has par­tial­ly suc­ceed­ed in their bid to re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion af­ter their re­tain­ing wall and tank stand were dam­aged by a faulty Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) con­nec­tion in 2019.

Mary and Vib­ert Stephens’ neg­li­gence law­suit against the au­thor­i­ty was set to go on tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Jacque­line Wil­son last Fri­day when WASA’s lawyers of­fered to com­pen­sate them for the dam­age.

The au­thor­i­ty agreed to pay $229,102.77, which rep­re­sent­ed the costs of ge­ot­ech­ni­cal re­ports, es­ti­mates, and re­pairs. It al­so agreed to $50,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages.

How­ev­er, it re­fused to pay an ad­di­tion­al $192,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for the loss of rent earn­ings for four ground-floor apart­ments in the cou­ple’s three-storey apart­ment build­ing since the in­ci­dent.

Af­ter con­sid­er­ing the ev­i­dence in re­la­tion to the cou­ple’s ad­di­tion­al claim, Jus­tice Wil­son dis­missed it.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, the Stephens, who hold T&T and Unit­ed States cit­i­zen­ship, ac­quired the land and con­struct­ed the build­ing to earn ex­tra in­come and have a place to stay on their reg­u­lar vis­its to Trinidad.

Be­tween 2009 and 2010, the cou­ple con­struct­ed a tank stand and re­tain­ing wall. 

On Ju­ly 25, 2017, they no­ticed wa­ter freely flow­ing from the weep­ing holes in the wall.

They claimed that they con­tact­ed the au­thor­i­ty, and a team vis­it­ed the prop­er­ty to as­sess the sit­u­a­tion.

The re­tain­ing wall and the tank stand col­lapsed the fol­low­ing day be­fore the au­thor­i­ty’s staff could re­turn to con­duct re­pairs.

The cou­ple, through their lawyers Yaseen Ahmed and Tara Lutch­man, filed a law­suit al­leg­ing that WASA was neg­li­gent in fail­ing to main­tain the con­nec­tion and to im­me­di­ate­ly re­pair the leak af­ter be­ing no­ti­fied.

In its de­fence, the au­thor­i­ty de­nied any wrong­do­ing. It claimed that the dam­age was not caused by the con­nec­tion and that the wall and tank stand were poor­ly con­struct­ed.

“The de­fen­dant specif­i­cal­ly de­nies that it has ei­ther caused or con­tributed to the loss of the claimants, which loss is de­nied, and the claimants are put to strict proof of their al­leged loss,” WASA’s lawyer, Christlyn Moore, said.

Al­though WASA al­so agreed to pay the cou­ple al­most $50,000 in le­gal costs for bring­ing the law­suit, it was re­duced by $16,200 as the cou­ple un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed the loss of rental earn­ings as­pect of the case af­ter WASA’s set­tle­ment of­fer.