By| Travis Chase |HGP Nightly News|
GEORGETOWN, GUYANA — The High Court has ruled that a West Bank Demerara man was unlawfully arrested and detained by members of the Guyana Police Force, awarding him G$1.6 million in damages.
In a definitive judgment handed down on Friday, June 12, 2026, Justice Simone Morris-Ramlall declared that the arrest of Mikhail Miggins at the Wales Police Station on November 14, 2024, and his subsequent multi-day imprisonment, constituted a direct violation of his fundamental constitutional right to personal liberty.
The legal battle stems from a police intervention where ranks informed Miggins he was wanted for the criminal offense of fraudulent conversion. The arrest was triggered by a commercial complaint alleging that Miggins had accepted money for a custom furniture set that was never delivered to the buyer.
However, Justice Morris-Ramlall found that the underlying dispute was strictly a private, civil matter regarding a breach of contract, rather than a criminal act. The court ruled that the operational ranks acted entirely without reasonable and probable cause, emphasizing that a commercial default does not provide lawful grounds for criminal suspect processing or detention.
While the High Court validated the claim of false imprisonment, it rejected Miggins’ ancillary demands for damages relating to assault, battery, malicious prosecution, and the unlawful deprivation of property, citing insufficient evidence to support those specific claims.
In her assessment of the financial compensation, the judge took into heavy consideration that Miggins was kept in police custody for four days without a valid justification. The court noted there was zero evidence suggesting he posed a flight risk, nor was there any plausible reason to deny him standard station bail during the initial hours of his detention.
Consequently, Justice Morris-Ramlall ordered the Attorney General, as the legal representative of the state, to pay Miggins G$1.6 million in general damages plus accumulated interest.
Miggins was represented throughout the constitutional motion by prominent attorney-at-law Darren Wade.
The ruling comes at a time of increased scrutiny regarding police conduct. Speaking recently at the opening of a joint Police-Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) legal training symposium, Deputy Solicitor-General Shoshanna Lall explicitly pointed to this case and others like it. Lall highlighted an urgent need to establish permanent, institutional training programs for ranks of all levels on how to properly enforce laws without infringing on citizens’ civil liberties, noting the financially draining volume of civil lawsuits being successfully brought against the state for constitutional violations.
