De­bra Wanser

At­tor­ney Om Lal­la has with­drawn as one of the at­tor­neys ad­vis­ing Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) on the le­gal con­se­quences aris­ing out of the dis­missal of its chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Cap­tain Ian Brun­ton. Lal­la was one of the lawyers han­dling the mil­lion-dol­lar brief from the new­ly-ap­point­ed CAL board. In a let­ter to Ner­ine Small, the air­line's cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, Lal­la, of the firm K R Lal­la and Com­pa­ny, who was re­tained by CAL to work in con­junc­tion with British QC, An­drew Mitchell, cit­ed "pure­ly eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples for his de­ci­sion to quit." Sources said a con­flict of in­ter­est had arisen with Lal­la who has been the per­son­al lawyer for Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Jack Warn­er, the line min­is­ter for CAL, over ten years and al­so be­ing hired by CAL's new­ly-ap­point­ed chair­man George Nicholas to give le­gal ad­vice to the CAL board which is at log­ger­heads with Warn­er.

Lal­la is rep­re­sent­ing Warn­er in a num­ber of mat­ters be­fore the court and he is al­so the at­tor­ney for Fi­fa and T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion.

Lal­la, in a let­ter to Small on Fri­day, said the con­flict be­tween the CAL board and Warn­er over the dis­missal of Brun­ton fig­ured in his de­ci­sion to step down as an at­tor­ney in the mat­ter. The at­tor­ney not­ed that since the con­flict be­tween both par­ties was "es­ca­lat­ing," he felt it pru­dent to cease act­ing for CAL, hav­ing re­gard to his pro­fes­sion­al re­la­tion­ship with Warn­er. He cit­ed "pure­ly eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples" for his de­ci­sion to quit as CAL's le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

Lal­la al­so sent copies of the let­ter in which he with­drew as an at­tor­ney for CAL to Nicholas, Warn­er and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Last week­end, when Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed Lal­la, he in­sist­ed he was com­mit­ted to rep­re­sent­ing Warn­er. Back then, he said he had not seen his de­ci­sion to rep­re­sent CAL as a con­flict of in­ter­est.

"Sure, I re­main as one of Mr Warn­er's at­tor­neys. I have been re­tained by CAL. The whole is­sue is about a chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer who was ter­mi­nat­ed and it is the com­pa­ny that has re­tained my ser­vices. I do not see any is­sue for a con­flict of in­ter­est to arise. It is a com­pa­ny tak­ing a de­ci­sion; it is a cor­po­rate is­sue and not a per­son­al is­sue," Lal­la had said. De­spite Cab­i­net rat­i­fy­ing the de­ci­sion to ac­quire nine tur­bo­prop air­craft from Avions de Trans­port Re­gion­al (ATR), the CAL Board is seek­ing to over­turn the de­ci­sion. Warn­er last week called for the board to re­sign. He in­di­cat­ed that the rift was widen­ing. Warn­er is await­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­ci­sion on the mat­ter in­volv­ing him and CAL. Calls to Lal­la's cell­phone yes­ter­day went unan­swered.