The Privy Coun­cil on Thurs­day re­fused to grant Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­er Per­cy Far­rell and oth­ers spe­cial leave to file an ap­peal against a rul­ing of T&T's Court of Ap­peal that they had no right to an in­ter­im cost or­der, which would have meant that their le­gal costs would have been cov­ered by the State.

The Privy Coun­cil al­so set aside an ear­li­er de­ci­sion that the claimants should be treat­ed as "fi­nan­cial­ly as­sist­ed per­sons." The rul­ing of T&T's high­est court means that Far­rell and oth­ers "shall now be li­able to pay the State its le­gal costs at sev­er­al lev­els of lit­i­ga­tion," ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. The Privy Coun­cil stat­ed that per­mis­sion to ap­peal was re­fused "be­cause the ap­pli­ca­tion does not raise an ar­guable point of law."

In the state­ment, Ram­lo­gan not­ed that Far­rell and oth­ers have lost at every stage of the ju­di­cial lad­der. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al stat­ed: "As a con­se­quence of the de­ci­sion, is­sues are like­ly to arise amongst the pol­i­cy­hold­ers as to how the mount­ing le­gal bill for costs would be met. The State has the ben­e­fit of the op­tion of us­ing the le­gal process to en­force the or­ders of costs in­clud­ing mak­ing a de­duc­tion from monies in the as­sets held by Far­rell and oth­ers."

Ram­lo­gan said the Privy Coun­cil had last week grant­ed an or­der treat­ing Far­rell as a per­son in for­ma pau­peris (a poor per­son in need of fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance). If suc­cess­ful, the or­der meant that Far­rell would have avoid­ed li­a­bil­i­ty for le­gal costs in the event that he was un­suc­cess­ful in the ap­pli­ca­tion.

The state­ment from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice said that Ram­lo­gan "stren­u­ous­ly ob­ject­ed to this or­der and com­plained to the Privy Coun­cil that the Or­der had been made with­out the ben­e­fit of the State be­ing heard on this is­sue." The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's side ar­gued that the Cli­co claimants "were per­sons of sub­stan­tial means and had failed to cross the req­ui­site thresh­old to be treat­ed as fi­nan­cial­ly aid­ed."

Ac­cord­ing to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's state­ment, in re­fus­ing to grant Far­rell spe­cial leave, the Privy Coun­cil "took the un­usu­al step of re­vers­ing its own or­der pre­vi­ous­ly made to treat Far­rell as a fi­nan­cial as­sist­ed per­son." The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Alan New­man QC and oth­ers, while Far­rell and the oth­er claimants were led by Claude Den­bow SC and Seenath Jairam SC. Den­bow was not avail­able to com­ment on the case yes­ter­day.