FORMER Public Services Association (PSA) president Watson Duke escaped serving a nine-month term of imprisonment for contempt arising out of a failure to abide by certain court orders during his leadership of the trade union.

Instead, Duke and the PSA were ordered to pay fines of $35,000 each.

The ruling was delivered by Justice Devindra Rampersad on March 26, when he found the PSA and Duke liable for not complying with court orders made on January 21, 2020. The orders were part of his ruling in a lawsuit brought a year earlier by five members of the PSA – Curtis Cuffie, Demetrius Harrison, Annisha Persad, Curtis Meade, and Duaine Hewitt – over financial irregularities and a failure to hold non-executive elections.

After the judge ruled in favour of the five, Cuffie and Hewitt filed the contempt application, alleging the court’s orders had not been followed.

The action was brought against the union, Duke, former PSA general secretary Shalene Suchit-Dwarika, and the union’s then-trustees Dawn Garcia and Caray Price.

PSA president Leroy Baptiste –who replaced Duke after he resigned in late 2021 – first vice president Felisha Thomas, general secretary Kellon Wallace, deputy general secretary Ria Ralph-Watson, and trustee Kebba Thatcher were then added to the application.

In his ruling, Rampersad said there would be no useful purpose in imposing a sentence of imprisonment on Duke, since he was no longer president of the PSA.

“However, for almost two years, under his watch, he did not take the affirmative steps that were necessary to ensure compliance with the order and to show deference and respect to an order of the court and the due process of the law.

“What was done was in this court’s respectful view wholly, and woefully, insufficient.

“Directing his officers to comply without ensuring that compliance all the while managing and controlling the first defendant without the benefit of a properly constituted general council and without the oversight of the annual general conference over the course of two years despite this court’s order is highly reprehensible.”

Rampersad added, “The second defendant has moved on leaving the order incomplete while knowing fully well that he was a named party against whom an order was made directly rather than indirectly through the first defendant.”

He also said Duke had shown no remorse to the court, nor did he explain his failure to ensure compliance. Instead, the judge said, he “passed off his responsibility to the tenth defendant who was obligated to follow his direction but did not complete the act...

“Therefore, it stands, having regard to all of the circumstances, that the second defendant is equally liable as the first defendant for the failure.

The judge was also critical of explanations of why the court’s orders were not followed, in particular the failure to hold the annual general conference and section elections.

“This was not an ordinary situation of laissez-faire ‘come-what-may-whenever-I will do it when I get to it,' but it was one that was