The High Court has up­held an in­junc­tion filed by busi­ness­man Dan­ny Guer­ra and his com­pa­ny, DG Homes Lim­it­ed, against po­lice of­fi­cers ac­cused of vi­o­lat­ing Guer­ra’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights dur­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­leged hu­man traf­fick­ing and wage vi­o­la­tions. 

The de­ci­sion, de­liv­ered yes­ter­day, is a le­gal vic­to­ry for Guer­ra in his on­go­ing bat­tle against po­lice ac­tions he claims were un­law­ful.

The case stems from a po­lice search at DG Homes’ of­fice in San­gre Grande in May 2024, dur­ing which Guer­ra al­leged his rights were in­fringed up­on. Guer­ra, rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen, con­tend­ed that Sergeant Ra­jesh An­toine of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) pre­vent­ed his lawyer from be­ing present dur­ing ques­tion­ing. Guer­ra claimed this vi­o­lat­ed his right to le­gal coun­sel un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.

De­spite pro­vid­ing pay­roll doc­u­ments to Min­istry of Labour of­fi­cials, who found no wage-re­lat­ed vi­o­la­tions, Guer­ra al­leged that Sergeant An­toine per­sist­ed in ques­tion­ing him about em­ploy­ing non-cit­i­zens and ac­cess­ing the com­pa­ny’s safe—ac­tions Guer­ra claimed oc­curred with­out le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Ini­tial­ly, Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams grant­ed an emer­gency in­junc­tion, bar­ring of­fi­cers from ques­tion­ing Guer­ra with­out his lawyer present. The court al­so or­dered the ev­i­dence col­lect­ed dur­ing the search to be sub­mit­ted to the Supreme Court Reg­is­trar.

In yes­ter­day’s hear­ing, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad dis­missed an ap­pli­ca­tion by the State to strike out Guer­ra’s con­sti­tu­tion­al claim. The State ar­gued that Guer­ra’s law­suit was vex­a­tious and dis­rupt­ed an on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion. How­ev­er, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found no ev­i­dence of any ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion, crit­i­cis­ing the po­lice for al­leged­ly dis­re­gard­ing the court’s pri­or or­der.

“It is ab­solute­ly un­ac­cept­able for a po­lice of­fi­cer to dis­re­gard an or­der of the Supreme Court,” the judge stat­ed, em­pha­siz­ing the im­por­tance of ad­her­ing to court rul­ings in a democ­ra­cy gov­erned by the rule of law.

The court al­so ad­dressed the con­flict­ing ac­counts of the in­ci­dent. Guer­ra claimed that his lawyer was de­nied ac­cess dur­ing ques­tion­ing, while State at­tor­ney Ste­fan Jaikaran ar­gued that Guer­ra was not ac­tu­al­ly in­ter­viewed but mere­ly asked about the lo­ca­tion of doc­u­ments. De­spite these dis­crep­an­cies, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad reaf­firmed the fun­da­men­tal right to le­gal coun­sel, re­ject­ing the State’s ar­gu­ment that the in­junc­tion hin­dered the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The judge not­ed that no ev­i­dence had been pre­sent­ed sug­gest­ing the law­suit had ob­struct­ed the po­lice’s work.

In his rul­ing, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so cri­tiqued the State’s at­tempt to have the claim dis­missed on pro­ce­dur­al grounds, not­ing that con­sti­tu­tion­al claims are ex­empt from sum­ma­ry judg­ment. He fur­ther crit­i­cized the De­fen­dants for fail­ing to com­ply with the ear­li­er court or­der to pre­serve ev­i­dence ob­tained dur­ing the search, warn­ing that non-com­pli­ance could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences at tri­al.

Guer­ra’s le­gal team, which in­cludes at­tor­neys Wayne Sturge and Dayadai Har­ri­paul, will now pro­ceed with the case, which seeks to have the court de­clare that Guer­ra’s rights were breached and to se­cure com­pen­sa­tion.