Trinidad judge: Environmental authority, police don’t have power to shut down authorised events due to noise

Judge Margaret Mohammed
Judge Margaret Mohammed

(Trinidad Guardian) The Environmental Management Authority (EMA) and the police do not have the power to shutdown authorised events due to noise levels.

High Court Judge Margaret Mohammed made the statement last Friday as she upheld a promoter Wild Goose Limited’s lawsuit against the EMA and Senior Supt Garth Nelson over their decision to shut down its Tailgate Carnival event two years ago.

According to the evidence in the case, the event at the Queen’s Park Savannah, in Port-of-Spain, on February 26, 2019, was shut down almost two hours early after the company’s official Khama Taylor-Phillip was allegedly repeatedly warned that the event was exceeding decibel levels set in a Noise Variation granted by the EMA.

In the 69-page judgment, Mohammed ruled that the EMA did not have the power to take such action as the Environmental Management Act prescribes a procedure for dealing with noise variation violations which includes issuing a written warning and obtaining injunction.

“The evidence in this case was that the agents and/or servants of the First and Second Defendants had taken coercive action by shutting down the event in circumstances where they had no power to do so.

In so doing the actions by the first and second defendants were arbitrary and unfair to the Claimant,” Mohammed said, as she also noted that the company had also paid a $10,000 fine.

She also rejected claims that the action fell under the EMA’s emergency powers.

“In the instant case, there was no cogent evidence from the First Defendant (EMA) that as a consequence of the claimant being in violation of the noise variation, there was a threat to life of persons at the event or in surrounding areas, a public disaster, or economic ruin of the country,” Mohammed said.

Mohammed also ruled that the police did not have the power under the Police Service Act or Summary Offences Act as claimed.

“At best those remedies in law authorized the said officers ‘to arrest without a warrant’, any person at the event if they had reasonable and probable cause to believe that the said person had committed the offence of a breach of the peace, a public nuisance, or any other crime or breaches of law,” she said.

While Mohammed ruled that the company’s constitutional right to protection of the law was breached by the action, she did not award damages as the company failed to adequately prove the losses they claimed they incurred.

However, she did order the EMA and Nelson to pay $30,000 in vindicatory damages.

“I have decided to make an award for vindicatory damages to register the court’s strong disapproval of the defendant’s decision to shut down an event in circumstances where there was no expressed or implied authority to do so,” Mohammed said.

The defendants were also ordered to pay the company’s legal costs for bringing the landmark lawsuit, which sets a precedent for event promoters.

In a statement on its Instagram account, yesterday, the company said it was grateful for the outcome.

“Our mission is not to find ways around the law or to abuse it but instead use this opportunity to have fruitful and long overdue dialogue with the T&T Police Service (TTPS) and EMA along with other stakeholders on how we chart the way forward,” it said.

The T&T Promoters Association expressed similar sentiments as it said: “The TTPA supports the decision of our member to seek judicial review of this critical point of law and believes that managing conflict via the courts in matters that have national significance, is one of the most prudent ways of defining the parameters of our operations.”