Sascha Wil­son

The at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing a moth­er and her two chil­dren who are seek­ing to be re­leased from the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal with­drew their habeas cor­pus ap­pli­ca­tions yes­ter­day.

This came as a re­sult of new reg­u­la­tions im­ple­ment­ed on Thurs­day which gives the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) the pow­er to quar­an­tine a per­son once they test pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

Through her at­tor­ney Ger­ard Ramdeen, Karen Ram­sa­roop had chal­lenged their de­ten­tions, ar­gu­ing that the state did not have the pow­er to quar­an­tine them.

When the mat­ter was heard by Jus­tice Ricky Rahim via vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day, Ramdeen in­di­cat­ed that they would be with­draw­ing the ap­pli­ca­tions based on the new reg­u­la­tions un­der the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance. He in­ferred that the new guide­lines were on­ly im­ple­ment­ed be­cause of this mat­ter.

How­ev­er, Regi­nald Ar­mour SC, who rep­re­sent­ed Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal med­ical di­rec­tor Dr Michelle Trot­man, re­ject­ed the no­tion that there was any ul­te­ri­or pur­pose of mo­tive by his clients. Ar­mour said the re­al­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion is that “we all, every one of us, is deal­ing with a very flu­id, rapid­ly evolv­ing state of cir­cum­stances.”

In the af­fi­davits filed, Ram­sa­roop’s at­tor­neys con­tend­ed that they were be­ing un­law­ful­ly de­tained by the state as they did not sat­is­fy the statu­to­ry pre­con­di­tions. They based their ar­gu­ment on the pre­con­di­tion that a per­son could be quar­an­tined if they had a his­to­ry abroad. Up­on that per­son’s re­turn to the coun­try, they ar­gued he/she would be quar­an­tined for 14 days if they ex­hib­it signs of con­tract­ing a con­ta­gious ill­ness. Al­though they test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19, Ram­sa­roop and her chil­dren had no trav­el his­to­ry.  How­ev­er, it is be­lieved that they con­tract­ed the virus from her hus­band who re­cent­ly trav­elled abroad.   Re­sist­ing Ramdeen’s ap­pli­ca­tion for costs, Ar­mour sub­mit­ted, “It is my re­spec­tive view that they are at­tempt­ing to stay ahead of these very flu­id cir­cum­stances and ahead of the curve in or­der to flat­ten it to pro­tect the cit­i­zens and peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.” 

On Wednes­day, Ramdeen had al­so with­drawn a sim­i­lar ap­pli­ca­tion brought on be­half of Crime Watch host Ian Al­leyne, who filed a habeas cor­pus writ af­ter he re­ceived dis­charge doc­u­ments but was lat­er told that he could not leave the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal. The judge will de­cide on costs for both mat­ters on May 4.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view af­ter­wards, how­ev­er, Ramdeen in­sist­ed that the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tion 10 was de­lib­er­ate­ly im­ple­ment­ed be­cause of Ram­sa­roop’s mat­ter. He said this was the sec­ond time in a week that fun­da­men­tal er­rors of the ex­ec­u­tive had been high­light­ed and cured af­ter cit­i­zens sought le­gal ac­tion. He not­ed that last week the reg­u­la­tions re­gard­ing liquor marts had to be amend­ed.

“In these times of pub­lic emer­gency, where the pop­u­la­tion is gripped with fear of the virus that con­fronts us, one ex­pects that when laws are passed that the rights of cit­i­zens will be con­sid­ered to en­sure that leg­is­la­tion meets the pub­lic in­ter­est,” he said.