The High Court has set aside a judgment which awarded $20 million in damages to the men acquitted of the kidnapping and murder of Vindra Naipaul-Coolman.

It comes after an application to disregard the default judgement was filed by the Attorney General’s Office. 

The nine formerly accused had filed the malicious prosecution claim in May 2020, and were awarded the monies due to the Attorney General Office’s failure to submit a counterclaim. 

However, in a decision handed down today, Justice Joan Charles found that the proceedings had not been properly served on the Attorney General.

In giving her reasons, Justice Charles concluded that the Rules relating to service of
Originating documents and Notices on the State are clear and mandatory – as such they must be complied with. The result is that the Claimants have not established that the Claim Form and Statement of Case were served; consequently, an important, mandatory condition for permission to enter judgment against the Defendant pursuant to CPR 12.3(a) and 12.4(a) was not met. It follows that the judgment was wrongly entered and must be set aside pursuant.

 In February of this year, the case file which disappeared from the Solicitor General’s Department in 2020, resulting in the State being ordered at the time to pay the $20million was found after it went “missing”, in the Attorney General’s words.

Retired judge Stanley John, who was appointed by Attorney General Reginald Armour to lead the investigation into the disappearance of the file, confirmed on February 6 that the document had been located.