The State has dis­con­tin­ued an ap­peal over the al­most $400,000 in com­pen­sa­tion that was award­ed to a man from San­ta Flo­ra, who was beat­en by a po­lice of­fi­cer and framed for drug pos­ses­sion.

Ear­li­er this week, at­tor­neys from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al filed a no­tice with­draw­ing the ap­peal, which was filed af­ter Ross Paul’s as­sault and bat­tery and false im­pris­on­ment case was up­held in Ju­ly 2022.

Paul’s lawyers Prakash Ma­haraj and Shir­van Ramd­hanie filed the case af­ter their client’s in­ci­dent with the po­lice of­fi­cer on Au­gust 18, 2013.

Ac­cord­ing to his court fil­ings, Ross was walk­ing in his com­mu­ni­ty when he en­coun­tered the po­lice of­fi­cer, who went to school with his broth­er and pre­vi­ous­ly worked in a bar he fre­quent­ed be­fore join­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Ross claimed that the of­fi­cer, who threat­ened him in the past, told him that he (the of­fi­cer) was go­ing to ar­rest him.

Ross claimed that he walked away to­wards the San­ta Flo­ra Po­lice Sta­tion to make a re­port of the threat but was grabbed by the of­fi­cer, who be­gan punch­ing him.

He al­leged that the of­fi­cer threat­ened to kill him and then placed a plas­tic bag with mar­i­jua­na in his pock­et.

The of­fi­cer’s col­league came to his as­sis­tance and they ar­rest­ed Ross and took him to the po­lice sta­tion.

He was de­tained at the sta­tion for al­most four hours be­fore be­ing told that he was free to leave and seek med­ical at­ten­tion.

Ross claimed that he re­ceived treat­ment at the Siparia Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty but was un­able to work for five months while re­cov­er­ing from the in­jury to his shoul­der.

In the law­suit, Ross claimed that he was trau­ma­tised from the un­pro­voked at­tack.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the of­fi­cer was in­ves­ti­gat­ed by his col­leagues and even­tu­al­ly charged over the at­tack.

The of­fi­cer’s crim­i­nal case was still pend­ing when Paul’s case was up­held by High Court Judge Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams.

In her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams or­dered $18,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages and $120,000 in ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages plus $15,501.37 in in­ter­est.

She al­so or­dered $200,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages, which serves to pun­ish the State for the op­pres­sive con­duct of the of­fi­cer and warn against sim­i­lar con­duct.

The ex­em­plary dam­ages award was one of the high­est award­ed lo­cal­ly for the type of case.

The State was al­so or­dered to pay Paul $55,500 in le­gal costs he ex­pend­ed in pur­su­ing the case.