FI­FA has been giv­en the green light to re­take con­trol of the the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA).

De­liv­er­ing a judge­ment dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and Ap­pel­late Judge Nolan Bereaux ruled that the law­suit, brought by em­bat­tled TTFA pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his Unit­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive team, con­tra­vened the TTFA's con­sti­tu­tion.

The de­ci­sion means that FI­FA is free to rein­tro­duce the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee which they re­placed Wal­lace and his team with in March.

With such a move, FI­FA may al­so chose to lift the TTFA's in­def­i­nite sus­pen­sion, which it ap­plied af­ter Wal­lace and his team failed to with­draw the law­suit by its ex­tend­ed ul­ti­ma­tum in Sep­tem­ber.

FI­FA has pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that the lift­ing of the sus­pen­sion was con­tin­gent on the with­draw­al of the law­suit and mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the TTFA's leg­is­la­tion and Con­sti­tu­tion to pre­vent sim­i­lar le­gal ac­tion in the fu­ture, how­ev­er, based on the Ap­peal Court's find­ings the lat­ter may be un­nec­es­sary.

Wal­lace and his team may still have a life line if they de­sire to pur­sue the case to its fullest as they can still ap­peal the Court of Ap­peal's rul­ing to the Privy Coun­cil.

They are al­so free to pur­sue a case be­fore the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS).

Bereaux, who wrote the sub­stan­tive judge­ment, not­ed that the Con­sti­tu­tion pre­scribes that all dis­putes be­tween the TTFA and FI­FA should be dealt with by the CAS.

"The fact that such a pro­vi­sion is en­shrined in the TTFA's Con­sti­tu­tion means that the TTFA and its ex­ec­u­tive are bound to com­ply. The re­sult is that the fil­ing of these pro­ceed­ings was a breach of the TTFA's Con­sti­tu­tion," Bereaux said.

He al­so said that High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in, who heard the case de­spite FI­FA's ju­ris­dic­tion­al protest and found in Wal­lace and his team's favour, was wrong to rule that the FI­FA's Statutes, which deal with the ap­point­ment of nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tees to mem­ber fed­er­a­tions, were in­con­sis­tent with the Act of Par­lia­ment, which in­cor­po­rat­ed the TTFA.

Bereaux said the leg­is­la­tion gave the TTFA the pow­er to adopt FI­FA's laws and poli­cies in its Con­sti­tu­tion.

"Hav­ing made its choice and hav­ing bound it­self by its own Con­sti­tu­tion to com­ply, it can­not now act out­side of its pro­vi­sions," Bereaux said, as he ruled that the CAS was the more ap­pro­pri­ate fo­rum as it is com­prised of sport­ing ex­perts.

Bu­reaux al­so stat­ed that Gob­in should have stayed the case, as re­quest­ed by FI­FA, and re­ferred it to ar­bi­tra­tion.

While Archie mere­ly gave his nod to Bereaux's writ­ten judge­ment, he de­cid­ed to weigh in on Gob­in's han­dling of the case.

"It was nei­ther pru­dent case man­age­ment nor an eco­nom­i­cal de­ploy­ment of ju­di­cial time and re­sources to at­tempt to fi­nal­ly de­ter­mine the sub­stan­tive is­sues and to de­liv­er a judge­ment less than a week be­fore the sched­uled hear­ing of the in­ter­locu­to­ry ap­peal...Zeal is com­mend­able but it must not ob­scure the need for cau­tion," Archie said.

In the judge­ment, the Ap­peal Court al­so ruled that the lit­i­ga­tion con­tra­vened the Ju­di­cia­ry's Civ­il Pro­ceed­ings Rules as it was served on FI­FA via email, when Swiss law does not per­mit such a method for ser­vice of a law­suit.

De­spite the rul­ing, Bereaux said that Wal­lace did have the au­thor­i­ty of the bring the case as all that was re­quired was the ap­proval of the board.

In ad­di­tion to de­clar­ing Gob­in's judge­ment null and void, the Ap­peal Court al­so or­dered Wal­lace and his team to pay FI­FA's le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the law­suit.

Wal­lace and his col­leagues were rep­re­sent­ed by Dr Emir Crowne, Matthew Gayle, Crys­tal Paul, and Ja­son Jones, while Christo­pher Hamel-Smith, SC, Jonathan Walk­er, and Cherie Gopie ap­peared for FI­FA.