DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A woman, whose moth­er died sud­den­ly a lit­tle over a month be­fore she was due to cel­e­brate her 49th birth­day in 2019, has failed in her bid to sue her moth­er’s for­mer em­ploy­er, the ad­min­is­tra­tors of the hos­pi­tal that treat­ed her and the po­lice for fail­ing to prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gate her death.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad dis­missed Afeisha Hut­son’s nov­el case against Na­tion­al Can­ners Lim­it­ed, the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al as it came up for vir­tu­al tri­al Tues­day.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ren­dered his de­ci­sion af­ter Hut­son’s lawyer Shali­ni Sankar closed her case and pre­sent­ed the ev­i­dence of Hut­son, her fa­ther Rawle, and her moth­er’s for­mer co-work­er Lau­rel Sobers.

He did not even both­er to lis­ten to the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed by the three de­fen­dants.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that there was no ev­i­dence to prove Hut­son’s claims against any of the three de­fen­dants.

“It was an un­for­tu­nate chain of events and there is noth­ing to sug­gest cul­pa­bil­i­ty should lie with any of the de­fen­dants,” he said. Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found no fault in how the com­pa­ny han­dled the sit­u­a­tion af­ter she com­plained of feel­ing un­well.

“There is ab­solute­ly no ev­i­dence to sug­gest the First De­fen­dant (Na­tion­al Can­ners) failed to dis­charge its oblig­a­tions to­wards its em­ploy­ee in such a man­ner to breach its du­ty of care,” he said.

Deal­ing with the case against the NCRHA, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that Hut­son did not present any ev­i­dence from a med­ical ex­pert to prove that the care pro­vid­ed to her moth­er fell be­low ac­cept­ed stan­dards.

“There is noth­ing to sug­gest that the doc­tors failed to fol­low any prop­er pro­to­col or pro­ce­dure...It was re­al­ly an un­time­ly death due to a med­ical con­di­tion,” he said.

He al­so not­ed that the po­lice could not be crit­i­cised for how they han­dled Hut­son’s re­port that her moth­er may have been poi­soned.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ques­tioned why Hut­son was not ad­vised against pur­su­ing the case.

“Lawyers must prop­er­ly ad­vise clients in cas­es where they sim­ply lack the prop­er ev­i­dence,” he said. De­spite em­pathis­ing with Hut­son and her rel­a­tives, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad still or­dered her to pay the de­fen­dants $14,000 in le­gal costs for the law­suit.

How­ev­er, he left it up to the par­ties to de­cide whether they would seek to en­force the cost or­der. Hut­son’s moth­er Trever­lene be­gan vom­it­ing while work­ing in the com­pa­ny’s pro­duc­tion de­part­ment af­ter con­sum­ing a fish meal that she and her col­leagues had pur­chased.

While her fam­i­ly claimed that she was on­ly al­lowed to leave to seek med­ical at­ten­tion when her hus­band came to meet her around 3 pm, the com­pa­ny claimed that she chose to re­main un­til her hus­band ar­rived. It al­so ad­mit­ted that Sobers’ sis­ter al­so had the same symp­toms, de­cid­ed to go to the hos­pi­tal and sur­vived.

Hut­son was tak­en to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty where she died while un­der­go­ing treat­ment.

An ini­tial au­top­sy re­vealed that she died of deep vein throm­bo­sis and pul­monary em­bolism caused by a blood clot in her lung. The fam­i­ly paid for a sec­ond au­top­sy by pathol­o­gist Dr Hu­bert Dais­ley, who sent sam­ples tak­en for a tox­i­co­log­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion. The fam­i­ly al­so made a re­port to po­lice as they sus­pect­ed that she had been poi­soned.

The com­pa­ny was rep­re­sent­ed by Cather­ine Ram­nar­ine, while the NCRHA was rep­re­sent­ed by Sush­ma Gopeesingh. The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Ronelle Hinds.