The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has lost its bid to over­turn an $18 mil­lion de­fault judg­ment ob­tained against it by a con­tract­ing com­pa­ny, af­ter it failed to prop­er­ly de­fend its law­suit over un­paid fees. 

In a de­ci­sion de­liv­ered on Tues­day, High Court Judge Ricky Rahim dis­missed the THA’s ap­pli­ca­tion to set aside the de­fault judg­ment ob­tained by Nazvic Con­trac­tors Lim­it­ed in Feb­ru­ary last year. 

The com­pa­ny filed a breach of con­tract case in De­cem­ber 2023 in re­la­tion to sev­er­al con­tracts it per­formed for the THA. 

It claimed that al­though it com­plet­ed its oblig­a­tions un­der the con­tracts and the work was cer­ti­fied, it was not paid the $18,299,468 it was owed.

It ob­tained the de­fault judg­ment af­ter the THA failed to de­fend the case as re­quired un­der the Civ­il Pro­ceed­ings Rules. 

The THA ap­plied to set aside the judg­ment and sought re­lief from sanc­tions for fail­ing to reg­is­ter an ap­pear­ance and file a de­fence to the case. 

The THA claimed that it on­ly learned of the case when its Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment (DIQUD) re­ceived no­tice of the de­fault judg­ment in April last year. 

The THA con­tend­ed that when the court doc­u­ments were served via reg­is­tered post in late 2023, they were ad­dressed to the “Sec­re­tary of the THA” and re­ceived by the Prop­er­ty Man­age­ment De­part­ment of the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary. 

It claimed that the of­fice and as­so­ci­at­ed de­part­ment were in the process of re­lo­cat­ing at the time, and the doc­u­ments were not im­me­di­ate­ly trans­ferred due to the “con­sid­er­able up­heaval and dis­ar­ray” caused by the move.

It al­leged that the di­vi­sion’s le­gal de­part­ment could not im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dress the de­fault judg­ment as staff had to in­ves­ti­gate the projects that were the sub­ject of the law­suits as such were com­plet­ed be­fore their tenure. 

While the THA made a part pay­ment of $2,282,800, it claimed that it need­ed time to have a quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or con­sid­er the con­tracts and de­ter­mine whether the sums claimed by the com­pa­ny for the work it per­formed were valid. 

Not­ing that the THA failed to file a de­fence de­spite mak­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion and did not sup­ply a sur­vey­or re­port, Jus­tice Rahim ruled that the THA failed to prove it had a pos­si­bil­i­ty of suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ing the case.

“The court, there­fore, finds that the de­fen­dant has failed to demon­strate that it has a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess in the claim and fur­ther that its po­si­tion amounts mere­ly to spec­u­la­tion on its part based on the af­fi­davits be­fore the court,” he said. 

Jus­tice Rahim al­so re­ject­ed the THA’s ex­pla­na­tion for its de­lay in ad­dress­ing the judg­ment. 

“The court wish­es to make it clear that it is not of the view that this was ad­min­is­tra­tive in­ad­ver­tence but that this was a mat­ter of ei­ther pur­pose­ful (al­beit per­haps mis­guid­ed) or reck­less fail­ure to act as soon as it was rea­son­ably prac­ti­ca­ble so to do,” he said. 

He al­so re­ject­ed ad­di­tion­al claims that the de­lay was par­tial­ly due to DIQUD ad­min­is­tra­tor Karl Mur­ray be­ing too busy to give nec­es­sary in­struc­tions. 

“If blame is to be as­cribed, it can­not and ought not be placed sole­ly at the feet of Mur­ray. Need­less to say, this is a poor rea­son,” Jus­tice Rahim said. 

The com­pa­ny was rep­re­sent­ed by Tama­ra Toolsie and Sav­it­ri Sookraj-Be­har­ry.