JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The Court of Ap­peal has resched­uled the hear­ing of lit­i­ga­tion over the ter­mi­na­tion of more than 300 Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) con­trac­tors.

The mat­ter, orig­i­nal­ly set for hear­ing to­day, has been ad­journed to Oc­to­ber 31, ac­cord­ing to a no­tice is­sued to at­tor­neys yes­ter­day.

CEPEP had sought an ur­gent hear­ing dur­ing the ju­di­cia­ry’s va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, but that ap­pli­ca­tion was re­fused by Ap­pel­late Judge Nolan Bereaux.

The ap­peal stems from a law­suit filed by East­man En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed, a Laven­tille-based gen­er­al con­tract­ing com­pa­ny, which con­tends that High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed erred when she stayed its claim and re­ferred as­pects of the case to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC.

East­man ar­gues that the judge was wrong to in­volve the DPP, who has no in­ves­tiga­tive pow­ers in such mat­ters, and to rule that the com­pa­ny was re­quired to pur­sue me­di­a­tion and ar­bi­tra­tion be­fore fil­ing suit, based on a clause in its con­tract. The com­pa­ny fur­ther claims she should have con­sid­ered its re­quest for an in­junc­tion to stay the ter­mi­na­tions and pre­vent the ap­point­ment of re­place­ment con­trac­tors.

East­man al­so con­tends that Jus­tice Mo­hammed made pre­ma­ture find­ings on whether Cab­i­net ap­proval was re­quired for the con­tract ex­ten­sions, with­out all the ev­i­dence be­ing pre­sent­ed and test­ed un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion.

The com­pa­ny filed the law­suit af­ter the UNC-led Gov­ern­ment ter­mi­nat­ed the con­tracts in late June. It claims CEPEP act­ed un­law­ful­ly by fail­ing to pro­vide the one month’s pay­ment in lieu of no­tice re­quired un­der Clause 15 of its con­tract. The clause al­lows CEPEP to end con­tracts by ei­ther giv­ing 30 days’ no­tice or mak­ing a pay­ment in lieu if the con­trac­tor fails to meet oblig­a­tions or per­for­mance stan­dards.

CEPEP, in re­sponse, ar­gued that Cab­i­net ap­proval was lack­ing for the con­tract ex­ten­sions and has ap­plied to have the law­suit struck out, cit­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of al­ter­na­tive dis­pute res­o­lu­tion mech­a­nisms.

East­man is rep­re­sent­ed by Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, St Clair O’Neil, and Ka­reem Mar­celle. CEPEP is rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Kent Sam­lal, Jared Ja­groo, and Asha Ram­lal of Free­dom Law Cham­bers.