(Trinidad Express) The Appeal Court has reserved its ruling in a challenge against the Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC) after it dismissed a complaint brought by a man who said he was sexually harassed by a female co-worker.
The complaint brought by Rishi Persad Maharaj was dismissed last November by Justice Donna Prowell-Raphael after the judge found that the filing of the complaint was an abuse of process.
Prowell-Raphael had also found that Maharaj named the wrong defendant in the complaint before she disposed of the matter.
At the Appeal Court yesterday, Justices Alice Yorke-Soo Hon, Nolan Bereaux and Prakash Moosai who presided over Maharaj’s challenge were asked by Maharaj’s attorney, Douglas Mendes SC, to overturn the commission’s ruling.
Following submissions, the three-judge panel reserved their ruling to a date to be set.
Maharaj claimed that he was employed as a quality control manager with Banquet and Conference Centre at Cascadia Hotel, and he was continuously harassed by the woman between the months of March and September 2015.
But just hours after expressing his displeasure with the woman’s conduct to another employee, he was fired from his job.
According to his complaint, the woman would often-times use inappropriate words towards him such as “bae”, “baby”, “hot” and “sexy”. He said she would also slap his buttocks and pinch him on his waist.
Abuse of process
One month after being terminated from his job, Maharaj lodged a complaint with the EOC, claiming sexual harassment and unfair dismissal.
The following month, December 2015, he reported a trade dispute through his union to the Ministry of Labour over the manner in which he was dismissed.
Eventually he received approximately $50,000 in compensation from his employers for the dismissal.
But in spite of this, Maharaj continued to pursue compensation at the EOC for loss of future earnings.
It was on this basis that the commission delivered its ruling on the abuse of process point.
Justice Prowell-Raphael found that Maharaj had already received compensation for the dismissal and therefore, he was not entitled to “double compensation.”
In his submissions however, Mendes said Prowell-Raphael was wrong in dismissing the complaint in its entirety.
He said his client was seeking compensation for loss of future earnings and not for the unfair dismissal since that had already been settled through the Labour Ministry.
Even if the commission found Maharaj was not entitled to compensation for loss of future earning, Mendes said just that aspect of his complaint could have been dismissed and the rest of the complaint for sexual harassment allowed to proceed.
The other reason for why the commission took the decision to dismiss the complaint was because Maharaj named Cascadia Hotel as the defendant and not the Banquet and Conference Centre.
Even though the centre is located at the hotel, they are two different entities.
Attorney for the hotel, Shanker Bidaisee, said Maharaj did not even make an application before the commission to have the correct respondent named as he ought to have done.
On the abuse of process point, Bidaisee said there was no substantial miscarriage of justice by the commission.
“It was a complaint for settlement when there was already a settlement. That could have been dealt with at the Industrial Court,” he said.
Senior Counsel Fyard Hosein also made brief submissions on behalf of the EOC.
