The Eng­lish Court of Ap­peal has dis­missed Dig­i­cel's ap­pli­ca­tion for per­mis­sion to ap­peal against an April 2010 de­ci­sion of Jus­tice Charles De­clan Mor­gan in its low­er court. Dig­i­cel al­so has been di­rect­ed by the court to pay TSTT's le­gal costs which are to be as­sessed at a stan­dard ba­sis. Jus­tice Mor­gan, in the rul­ing, af­ter a 77-day tri­al, de­liv­ered a land­mark de­ci­sion on Wednes­day dis­miss­ing all claims brought by Dig­i­cel in a law­suit against TSTT. Dig­i­cel ini­tial­ly sought at least US$50 mil­lion in dam­ages alone from TSTT for al­leged­ly de­lay­ing its in­ter­con­nec­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The rul­ing was based on pro­ceed­ings filed by Dig­i­cel in 2007 against TSTT and sev­er­al ca­ble and wire­less com­pa­nies on mat­ters aris­ing from the lib­er­al­i­sa­tion of the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions mar­kets in the Caribbean. The claim against TSTT was based up­on breach­es of the Pro­tec­tion Against Un­fair Com­pe­ti­tion Act 1966 (PAUC) and to what ex­tent, if any, that caused a de­lay in Dig­i­cel be­ing able to launch its ser­vices on the T&T mar­ket. Af­ter re­view­ing the ev­i­dence of wit­ness­es and thou­sands of pages of doc­u­ments, Jus­tice Mor­gan de­ter­mined that Dig­i­cel had not suf­fered any loss or dam­age as a re­sult of any ac­tion tak­en by TSTT.

He al­so not­ed there was no re­al or sub­stan­tial chance that the in­ter­con­nec­tion dis­pute be­tween Dig­i­cel and TSTT would have been re­solved be­fore March 31, 2006. Jus­tice Mor­gan was of the opin­ion be­cause of the time re­quired by Dig­i­cel, TSTT and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT) to fol­low agreed pro­ce­dures for con­ven­ing a prop­er­ly func­tion­ing ar­bi­tra­tion tri­bunal to ad­dress the in­ter­con­nec­tion rates dis­pute. Fol­low­ing Jus­tice Mor­gan's rul­ing, Dig­i­cel, in May 2010, sought per­mis­sion to ap­peal against the court's de­ci­sion. That ap­pli­ca­tion was re­fused by the Court of Ap­peal.

TSTT re­sponds

This ef­fec­tive­ly brings an end to these le­gal pro­ceed­ings in Lon­don and to the largest claim ever made against TSTT in the his­to­ry of its op­er­a­tions," said Lisa Agard, TSTT's le­gal and ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent (mo­bile). She said TSTT was pleased with the de­ci­sion as it no longer would be re­quired to ex­pend mil­lions of dol­lars in le­gal fees and man­age­ment time on the claim. She added: "The re­al bat­tle is in the mar­ket place, de­liv­er­ing val­ue to cus­tomers as op­posed to in a court of law."