The Court of Ap­peal has up­held the de­ci­sion of a judge to or­der a Bel­mont-based law firm to pay over $1 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for a fraud­u­lent land deal it was found to fa­cil­i­tate through neg­li­gence.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered yes­ter­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Maria Wil­son, Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh, and Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son re­ject­ed an ap­peal brought by The Le­gal Con­sul­tan­cy and its own­er, at­tor­ney Richard Beck­les, over the out­come of the case.

Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh, who wrote the judg­ment, ruled that Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad’s han­dling of the ev­i­dence and le­gal is­sues in the case could not be fault­ed.

Stat­ing that there was no ba­sis for dis­turb­ing their col­league’s find­ings, Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh said: “There was al­so no er­ror of law, as the judge ap­plied the cor­rect le­gal test on neg­li­gence.

“His find­ings of fact are jus­ti­fi­able on the ev­i­dence be­fore him.”

The law­suit was brought by Robert John, whose iden­ti­ty was stolen by a fraud­ster to sell the prop­er­ty he in­her­it­ed from his moth­er.

John claimed that af­ter his moth­er died in 2008, he be­came the sole ten­ant of the prop­er­ty.

In 2014, John pur­chased the prop­er­ty from Aranguez Es­tates Lim­it­ed and it was trans­ferred un­der a deed of con­veyance.

Five years lat­er, John ex­pressed in­ter­est in sell­ing the prop­er­ty and re­tained re­al es­tate agent Jil­lian Jones-Smith, of Step-by-Step Prop­er­ty Con­sul­tan­cy and Man­age­ment Lim­it­ed, to as­sist with the sale.

He claimed that Jones-Smith told him that she had been ap­proached by a buy­er, who was will­ing to pur­chase the prop­er­ty for $1.5 mil­lion.

John, who lives in Min­neso­ta, came to Trinidad to com­plete the trans­ac­tion but was un­able to as the po­ten­tial buy­er al­leged­ly gave Jones-Smith nu­mer­ous ex­cus­es why he could not close the deal.

Af­ter re­turn­ing to the Unit­ed States, Jones-Smith al­leged­ly in­formed him that she had sus­pi­cions about the buy­er as the lawyer, who he (the buy­er) claimed to be util­is­ing to con­duct the trans­ac­tion, de­nied know­ing him.

Jones-Smith con­duct­ed a ti­tle search through the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs and found out that the land had been pur­port­ed­ly sold for $840,000 to soft­ware de­vel­op­er Kee­lan Aaron Hunte, who pur­chased the prop­er­ty us­ing a mort­gage from First Cit­i­zens Bank (FCB).

Through the law­suit, John sought to in­val­i­date the deed of con­veyance and deed of mort­gage re­lat­ed to the prop­er­ty.

In their de­fence, Hunte and FCB de­nied any wrong­do­ing as they con­tend­ed that they did not know that the per­son who con­duct­ed the trans­ac­tion was im­per­son­at­ing John.

Hunte and FCB filed an an­cil­lary claim against the law firm which pre­pared the le­gal doc­u­ments.

Through the an­cil­lary claim, Hunte and FCB con­tend­ed that the law firm was neg­li­gent in the deal by al­leged­ly fail­ing to do prop­er due dili­gence on the doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed by the pur­port­ed sell­er.

In his judg­ment, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad up­held John’s claim as he ruled that Hunte could not be con­sid­ered a bona fide pur­chas­er for val­ue with­out no­tice as the fraud­ster had no ju­ris­dic­tion to en­ter in­to the sale.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that Beck­les and his firm should have recog­nised clear dis­crep­an­cies in the doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed by the fraud­ster, who im­per­son­at­ed John.

“The Le­gal Con­sul­tan­cy ab­di­cat­ed its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to its clients, en­gaged in shod­dy work, and as a con­se­quence failed to pro­tect Mr Hunte’s in­ter­est or FCB’s in­ter­est,” he said.

“The lawyers did not prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gate the iden­ti­ty of the fraud­ster and they did not de­tect the sig­nif­i­cant dis­crep­an­cies which ought to have alert­ed them as to the bona fides of the fraud­ster,” he added.

He al­so held that John’s re­al es­tate agent should have been more cir­cum­spect be­fore agree­ing to hand over the doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to the prop­er­ty to the po­ten­tial buy­er, who turned out to be a fraud­ster.

As part of his de­ci­sion in the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered the law firm to re­pay Hunte the mon­ey he would have ex­pend­ed on the deal, which in­clud­ed the stamp du­ty, the down pay­ment, and the mort­gage pay­ments he made.

The law firm was al­so or­dered to com­pen­sate FCB for the un­paid por­tion of Hunte’s mort­gage. It was al­so or­dered to cov­er the le­gal costs in­curred by John, Hunte, and FCB in the law­suit.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so crit­i­cised the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for fail­ing to ar­rest the fraud­ster by trac­ing the de­posit of the cheques used in the case.

In the ap­peal judg­ment, Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh stat­ed that the case high­light­ed the need for dif­fer­ent at­tor­neys to rep­re­sent the ven­dor and pur­chas­er in prop­er­ty trans­ac­tions.

“Where this is not the case, the pur­chas­er’s at­tor­ney will be called up­on to be ex­tra vig­i­lant to en­sure the iden­ti­ty of the ven­dor in the trans­ac­tion,” he said.

Beck­les and his law firm were rep­re­sent­ed by Shiv Shar­ma, and Adri­an Byrne. Tara Thomp­son, and Jus­tice Le­ung rep­re­sent­ed John, while Justin Junkere and Alana Prim­dass rep­re­sent­ed Hunte. FCB was rep­re­sent­ed by Jean-Louis Kel­ly, and Dante Sel­man-Car­ring­ton.