DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A busi­ness­man has been or­dered to pay over $405,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a fel­low en­tre­pre­neur for can­celling the lease for a night­club in south Trinidad with­out giv­ing prop­er no­tice. 

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment, last Fri­day, High Court Judge Bet­sy-Ann Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son up­held Sel­wyn Per­sad’s breach of con­tract case against Ra­jen­dra Maye. 

The le­gal dis­pute re­lat­ed to a lease for the Space La Nou­ba night­club in La Ro­main signed be­tween the busi­ness­men in late 2018. 

Maye sought to ter­mi­nate the lease with­in a month of sign­ing it as he claimed that Per­sad mis­rep­re­sent­ed the state of equip­ment es­sen­tial to the busi­ness when he in­duced him to en­ter in­to the agree­ment. 

He claimed that the sound sys­tem was not to an ac­cept­able stan­dard, that the point-of-sale sys­tem was not func­tion­al and that there were is­sues with com­mer­cial freez­ers and beer chillers. 

Per­sad de­nied Maye’s claims over the equip­ment and sought to re­ly on a clause of the con­tract, which states that ei­ther par­ty could can­cel it for any rea­son pro­vid­ed that they gave six months’ no­tice. 

Maye filed a counter-claim al­leg­ing that he left be­hind $387,102.81 in bar stock, which he pur­chased from Per­sad when he signed the lease. 

Per­sad de­nied any wrong­do­ing as he con­tend­ed that Maye utilised the stock while op­er­at­ing for a month and re­moved the re­main­der when he va­cat­ed the premis­es.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son ruled that Maye did not meet his oblig­a­tions un­der the con­tract to can­cel the lease. 

She al­so re­ject­ed his al­le­ga­tions about the equip­ment, which Maye used to jus­ti­fy the rescis­sion of the lease.

“The De­fen­dant has not met the ev­i­den­tial bur­den to prove that the sound sys­tem, the point-of-sale sys­tem and the com­mer­cial freez­er were not func­tion­ing prop­er­ly or at all,” she said. 

Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son al­so re­ject­ed Maye’s counter-claim be­cause he failed to pro­vide in­de­pen­dent ev­i­dence of such. 

“It seems more prob­a­ble that the De­fen­dant hav­ing paid the Claimant for the ex­ist­ing bar stock would not have left the same on the premis­es es­pe­cial­ly since the Claimant did not ex­press­ly agree to re­fund any mon­ey paid for the bar stock,” she said. 

While Per­sad was seek­ing six months’ rent at a rate of $135,000 per month for breach of the lease, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son said he was on­ly en­ti­tled to three months rent or $405,000 as he failed to take steps to mit­i­gate his loss­es by search­ing for an­oth­er ten­ant. 

“It is a set­tled prin­ci­ple of law that a claimant has a du­ty to take all rea­son­able steps to mit­i­gate the loss con­se­quent on the breach of con­tract,” she said. 

“A claimant is de­barred from re­cov­er­ing any dam­ages for any loss that he could have avoid­ed had he tak­en steps in mit­i­ga­tion,” she added. 

As part of her judg­ment, Maye was or­dered to pay in­ter­est on the com­pen­sa­tion in ad­di­tion to Per­sad’s le­gal costs for bring­ing the law­suit. 

Per­sad was rep­re­sent­ed by Ganesh Sa­roop and Robert Ab­dool-Mitchell of Free­dom Law Cham­bers.

Maye was rep­re­sent­ed by David Ra­jku­mar, and Naz­i­ma Ali-Knox.