Derek Achong

Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly has rub­bished the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion giv­en by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in its bid to get a favourable re­sponse to its bid over­turn the out­come of a $20 mil­lion ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion law­suit brought by nine men for­mer­ly ac­cused of the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man.

Speak­ing at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Sun­day Me­dia Brief­ing yes­ter­day, Ram­bal­ly re­peat­ed­ly re­ferred to a re­port in yes­ter­day’s Sun­day Guardian, which de­tailed the claims be­ing made by the AG’s Of­fice in its ap­pli­ca­tion to set aside the de­fault judg­ment that was ob­tained by the men and the cor­re­spond­ing com­pen­sa­tion as­sessed for them.

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, the AG’s Of­fice claimed that when the law­suit was filed by the group’s le­gal team led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, on May 29, 2020, it was served on State Coun­sel III Na­toya Moore from the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment, who was al­leged­ly not des­ig­nat­ed to make the col­lec­tion.

It al­so con­tend­ed that its non-par­tic­i­pa­tion in the case un­til the as­sess­ment of dam­ages be­fore High Court Mas­ter Martha Alexan­der, was due to sub­se­quent no­tices in the case be­ing served on the Chief State So­lic­i­tor’s De­part­ment in­stead of the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment, which both fall un­der the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs.

Ram­bal­ly said: “He (AG Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC) is mak­ing a worse ex­cuse than a child say­ing the dog ate my home­work...We, the tax­pay­ers, have to pay for that non­sense ex­cuse.”

Ram­bal­ly, him­self an at­tor­ney, ques­tioned the ve­rac­i­ty of the claim over the al­leged er­ror in serv­ing the court fil­ings in the case.

“Imag­ine, they want us to be­lieve that in these de­part­ments that there are not des­ig­nat­ed peo­ple who deal with ser­vice of doc­u­ments. If you go to a nor­mal of­fice, it may be the sec­re­tary or the re­cep­tion­ist. They are try­ing to hood­wink the na­tion in­to think­ing there was some­thing wrong with the ser­vice, when they have des­ig­nat­ed peo­ple in every of­fice,” Ram­bal­ly said.

Ram­bal­ly al­so ques­tioned the tim­ing of the ap­pli­ca­tion, as he point­ed out that the judge even­tu­al­ly hear­ing it would have to con­sid­er whether the AG’s Of­fice act­ed with haste af­ter dis­cov­er­ing the is­sue with the case.

“If you have con­cerns about this de­fault judg­ment and you feel there is some­thing sin­is­ter, you should ap­ply to set aside the judg­ment. One of the limbs in sat­is­fy­ing a court that a judg­ment should be set aside is how quick­ly you move to make an ap­pli­ca­tion,” Ram­bal­ly said.

Ram­bal­ly al­so took aim at the fact that Rol­ston Nel­son, SC, who was re­tained by Ar­mour to ad­vise on the case when he (Ar­mour) ap­point­ed re­tired Judge Stan­ley John and re­tired As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Pamela Schullera-Hinds to probe the miss­ing case file, was list­ed to lead the State’s le­gal team for ap­pli­ca­tion to set aside the de­fault judg­ment.

Ram­bal­ly ques­tioned how Nel­son could ad­vo­cate the case in court af­ter be­ing in­volved at the in­ves­tiga­tive stage.

“An ad­vo­cate can­not be caught up in the facts of a mat­ter. I find it is some­thing high­ly ir­reg­u­lar. There must be de­mar­ca­tion,” Ram­bal­ly said, as he called on Nel­son to re­turn the le­gal brief.

He al­so re­it­er­at­ed calls from his col­leagues for Ar­mour to dis­close the fees paid to Nel­son, John and Schullera-Hinds, as well as the con­tents of the pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion that was sub­mit­ted by John and Schullera-Hinds on Fri­day.

“We feel very strong­ly about this. This is re­al­ly in­com­pe­tence of the high­est or­der,” he said.

Con­tact­ed on Sat­ur­day to con­firm whether he in­tends to make the pre­lim­i­nary re­port pub­lic, AG Ar­mour point­ed to a press re­lease an­nounc­ing its (the re­port) han­dover to him.