May 17, 2022
With a Court left to assess damages against it for chemical burns sustained by a former employee, locally operated Trinidad oil company—Centipede Offshore (Guyana) Inc., has made a $7M offer to Tanesha Fredericks which she has agreed to accept.
According to the terms of the May 6th, 2022 agreement, the $7,497,187.02 offer made by Centipede Offshore Inc—which provides services to ExxonMobil here—represents full and final payment to Fredericks for the injuries she sustained.
The sum also represents compensation for, her employment “being brought to an end.”
In her statement of claim (SoC) Fredericks’ attorneys Eusi Anderson and Khawan Rodney had previously said that she was “ultimately fired after begging for better gloves and working conditions.”
According to the terms of the settlement, Fredericks also accepts having received “all salary, wages and other contractual benefits due and payable at the time her employment with the Company was brought to an end.”
Further, that she agrees that she “shall not be eligible for any further payment from or relating to her employment and expressly releases, discharges and waives any right or claim that she has or may have to any benefit, payment or award she may have received had her employment not [been] brought to an end.”
With acceptance of the sum, Fredericks brings her claim against Centipede Offshore Inc., to an end.
According to correspondence from the woman’s attorneys, previously seen by this newspaper, Centipede Offshore Inc., had provided Fredericks who worked as a utilities cleaner, substandard gloves not suited for handling toxic chemicals and cleaning agents.
The lawyers had said that instead of being given “industrial strength gloves” to do her work, Fredericks, even after repeatedly complaining, was only given surgical gloves.
After being moved around to various departments on the sea vessel, the lawyers said that it was subsequent to returning onshore that their client started to feel numb in all her fingers and after visiting the hospital it was confirmed that the reason she had lost feeling in her fingers was because of chemical burns from toxic chemicals which she handled on her job.
The lawyers had said that doctors told Fredericks that because of the damage caused to the nerves in her fingers, she would never again be able to feel her fingers and that “her disability is permanent.”
Fredericks had sought an order that $1M be granted to her as default judgment for what she had said was negligence on the part of her employer for the burns she suffered on October 28th and 29th, 2020.
According to court documents seen by this newspaper, she also sought special damages for medical expenses, loss of income, loss of earning capacity, interest thereon, court costs and any other order the Court deemed just to grant.
With no defence having been filed by the Defendant (Centipede Inc.,) High Court Judge Fidela Corbin-Lincoln in a ruling handed down last July, granted Fredericks a default judgment and was thereafter set to assess the quantum of damages to be awarded.
Anderson and Rodney had said that their client was being paid less than 30% of what Centipede Inc., pays similar employees in Trinidad doing the same job and that she had not been given the “same high quality equipment” as her Trinidadian counterparts on the vessel.
They added, too, that she “was always punctual and professional,” and never had any issues with the Company which could have resulted in her being fired.
After losing her job and being left with medical expenses, Fredericks in an interview with Stabroek News last year said that she had approached the Ministry of Labour to complain of her treatment but was told that it was too expensive to go on the rig to investigate.
Days following her interview with this newspaper, Minister of Labour, Joseph Hamilton said that he had never received any report concerning the 39-year-old mother of two being reportedly forced to work without adequate Personal Protective Equipment.
Hamilton, however, had said that while Fredericks was granted a default judgment by the High Court, she could nonetheless still visit the Ministry to make a formal report; after which an investigation could be launched.