Derek Achong

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing St Lu­cia-based Rock Hard Dis­tri­b­u­tion Lim­it­ed, its lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor and the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try were yes­ter­day locked in dis­cus­sions over a tem­po­rary stay of Gov­ern­ment’s move to in­tro­duce a quo­ta and li­cens­ing regime for the im­por­ta­tion of ce­ment.

When the case brought by Rock Hard came up for vir­tu­al hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Jacque­line Wil­son, Se­nior Coun­sel Deb­o­rah Peake, who led the min­istry’s le­gal team, in­di­cat­ed that an un­der­tak­ing giv­en by her client when the case was filed, late last month, ex­pired yes­ter­day.

Peake stat­ed that her client was un­will­ing to give a fur­ther un­der­tak­ing as it felt that the com­pa­nies would not be af­fect­ed or prej­u­diced by the new pol­i­cy while their law­suit over it is be­ing de­ter­mined ex­pe­di­tious­ly, as claimed.

Peake not­ed that based on her client’s records of ce­ment im­ports since Rock Hard en­tered the lo­cal mar­ket al­most four years ago, it would not reach the pro­posed quo­ta while the case is be­ing de­ter­mined in the first quar­ter of this year.

She al­so re­ferred to a no­tice is­sued by the com­pa­nies on the is­sue, which stat­ed that its op­er­a­tions would be sus­pend­ed un­til next month.

“When Gov­ern­ment sets pol­i­cy, it does so for the en­tire coun­try. We have to con­sid­er the ef­fect on Rock Hard but we have a coun­try to man­age,” Peake said, as she not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment could not con­sid­er a for­eign com­pa­ny over its cit­i­zens.

She not­ed that her client’s ac­tions were based on sev­er­al fac­tors in­clud­ing the coun­try’s on­go­ing for­eign ex­change is­sues.

Se­nior Coun­sel Ian Ben­jamin main­tained that his clients’ con­cerns over the po­ten­tial of the pol­i­cy to fi­nan­cial­ly ru­in the com­pa­nies were valid.

“What we face is a quite chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stance,” Ben­jamin said.

Af­ter hold­ing pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sion with the par­ties, Wil­son agreed to give them time to at­tempt to ar­rive at a com­pro­mise.

She in­di­cat­ed that if the par­ties did not agree by yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, she would have to set a date to hear the in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion, which was brought by the com­pa­nies as part of their case.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, the par­ties al­so agreed to have a rolled up hear­ing in which Wil­son would de­cide whether they should be grant­ed per­mis­sion to hear the case and the sub­stan­tive is­sues si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, as op­posed to sep­a­rate­ly as is done in tra­di­tion­al ju­di­cial re­view cas­es.

The tri­al of the case is set to take place on Feb­ru­ary 25.

Rock Hard is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Jagdeo Singh and Justin Phelps.