In var­i­ous le­gal mat­ters, there are strict time­lines to ini­ti­ate pro­ceed­ings. Should you fail to ad­here to these time­lines, you will lose the op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring your nec­es­sary le­gal chal­lenges. This ap­plies to sev­er­al ar­eas of civ­il lit­i­ga­tion and ex­tends to sum­ma­ry mat­ters be­fore the mag­is­trates’ courts. There are more se­ri­ous of­fences such as mur­der, which does not car­ry a statute of lim­i­ta­tions, ow­ing to which a charge can be laid at any time.

On oc­ca­sions, I have heard sev­er­al peo­ple de­bate and con­demn lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­ods. Usu­al­ly, these are the per­sons who have missed their op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring an ac­tion and be­lieve the sys­tem to be un­just.

In many in­stances, a lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od is nec­es­sary. Lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­ods al­low per­sons to be able to prop­er­ly pre­pare and de­fend them­selves against ac­tion with­out the added risk of los­ing ev­i­dence. Ev­i­dence can be lost in sev­er­al man­ners—po­ten­tial wit­ness­es hav­ing de­part­ed this life, or mi­grat­ed, or doc­u­men­ta­tion be­ing de­stroyed and/or mis­placed due to the pas­sage of time.

In the civ­il are­na, most mat­ters car­ry a statute of lim­i­ta­tions of four years. Ac­tions con­cern­ing monies due and ow­ing, breach of agree­ment or even per­son­al in­jury need to be filed with­in that four-year time­frame. The re­cov­ery of land car­ries a longer lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od of 16 years.

Ac­cord­ing to the Lim­i­ta­tion of Cer­tain Ac­tions Act, the four-year pe­ri­od is con­sid­ered to com­mence from:

(a) the date of the ac­tion first ac­cru­ing, or

(b) the date on which the per­son in­jured first ac­quired knowl­edge of the ac­cru­al of the cause of ac­tion.

The point re­ferred to as (b) usu­al­ly al­lows some lee­way with the strict ad­her­ence to a four-year time­frame, as many per­sons’ knowl­edge of the need for le­gal ac­tion does not im­me­di­ate­ly take root at the time of an ac­ci­dent or the first breach of an agree­ment, but, rather some time lat­er. This al­lows the court to con­sid­er some ex­cep­tion in when a four-year pe­ri­od will com­mence.

In dis­cussing lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­ods, a par­tic­u­lar lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od is now cause for con­cern. The Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act spec­i­fies a six-month pe­ri­od for a com­plaint pur­suant to a sum­ma­ry of­fence. This time lim­it should be fa­mil­iar to those peo­ple who are re­spon­si­ble for fil­ing the nec­es­sary com­plaints.

The Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act al­so stip­u­lates a six-month lim­it for fil­ing a com­plaint. Giv­en this, it was not sur­pris­ing that a par­tic­u­lar ap­proach was adopt­ed in a mat­ter held be­fore the Mag­is­trates’ Court last week.

While the Paria div­ing in­ci­dent dom­i­nat­ed head­lines for most of 2022 and con­tin­ued for a con­sid­er­able time there­after, much like most things, Trin­bag­o­ni­ans quick­ly moved on. I no­ticed that last week, tucked in­to a lit­tle cor­ner of the news­pa­per, was an in­ter­est­ing ar­ti­cle on the lat­est court ap­pear­ance in that mat­ter. The con­tents should have left our coun­try mor­ti­fied or even slight­ly scan­dalised, I wait­ed, but, the lev­el of con­tempt I ex­pect­ed nev­er came.

Those who at­tempt­ed to keep abreast of the mat­ter would re­call that this tragedy oc­curred on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022.

On Ju­ly 10, 2024, the charges were fi­nal­ly laid against Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny, LM­CS and oth­er ex­ec­u­tives be­fore the Mag­is­trates’ Court. Ev­i­dent­ly, the six-month time lim­it was not ad­hered to.

On the heels of this, by de­ci­sion dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 16, 2025, in the mat­ter of Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies v Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Au­thor­i­ty and Agency, the Privy Coun­cil con­firmed that crim­i­nal charges re­lat­ed to work­place safe­ty and health of­fences which are brought by the OSH Au­thor­i­ty must be done with­in six months of the breach com­ing to an in­spec­tor’s knowl­edge.

In essence, the con­fir­ma­tion of a time lim­it, which should have al­ways been ev­i­dent, al­lows at­tor­neys ar­gu­ing on be­half of Paria, LM­CS and ex­ec­u­tives to now take a pre­lim­i­nary ob­jec­tion that the charges laid against these per­sons and com­pa­nies are statute-barred. Should their ob­jec­tion be up­held by the court, it would re­sult in charges be­ing dis­missed and no one be­ing held crim­i­nal­ly ac­count­able for the tragedy which re­sult­ed in the sense­less loss of life. Yet, the se­ri­ous­ness of this seems to have passed by with­out de­bate, anger or shock. Un­less we are in stunned si­lence, but I doubt that.

The Privy Coun­cil’s rul­ing would not on­ly af­fect the Paria case. In read­ing the de­ci­sion de­liv­ered, I had to do a dou­ble take. In pre­sent­ing their ar­gu­ments, the OSH Au­thor­i­ty in­ti­mat­ed that any de­ci­sion con­firm­ing the six-month lim­it in fil­ing charges would af­fect 244 safe­ty and health com­plaints which had been brought be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court.

Con­sid­er for a mo­ment, 244 peo­ple, who have been wronged in some form or fash­ion due to health and safe­ty con­cerns, hav­ing their mat­ters dis­missed not be­cause their com­plaint was un­found­ed, but sole­ly on the ba­sis that some­one did not do their job in the time frame re­quired. It begs the ques­tion: at whose feet (if any) should blame be laid, whose in­ter­pre­ta­tion of leg­is­la­tion re­sult­ed in ad­vice be­ing giv­en where­by charges were laid out of time in so many mat­ters.

Lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­ods should al­ways be con­sid­ered and ad­hered to, whether in civ­il pro­ceed­ings or crim­i­nal charges. The fail­ure to do so re­sults in per­sons los­ing their day in court.

In civ­il mat­ters, lit­i­gants on­ly have them­selves to blame for fail­ure to seek le­gal ad­vice in a time­ly man­ner. In crim­i­nal mat­ters, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Paria mat­ter, one should ques­tion the fail­ure to bring charges with­in the spec­i­fied time and the ac­count­abil­i­ty of the rel­e­vant of­fi­cer.

Pavi­t­ra Ramharack is head of cham­bers at Pavi­t­ra Ramharack At­tor­neys at Law and can be reached at ramharack_pavi­t­ra@out­look.com