The Cepep Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed has won its ap­peal over a con­struc­tion com­pa­ny ob­tain­ing a de­fault judge­ment against it for un­paid fees for its re­fur­bish­ment works on the La Hor­quet­ta Health Cen­tre in 2015.

De­liv­er­ing a judge­ment yes­ter­day morn­ing, Ap­pel­late Judges Nolan Bereaux and Char­maine Pem­ber­ton ruled that a High Court Judge and an As­sis­tant Supreme Court Reg­is­trar got it wrong when they up­held Shade Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed’s ap­pli­ca­tion for the de­fault judge­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, in April 2015, Shade Con­struc­tion suc­cess­ful­ly ten­dered to per­form the work for Cepep on be­half of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA).

Un­der the terms of the agree­ment, Cepep al­leged­ly promised to pay $742,100 plus VAT for the work 90 days af­ter the project was com­plet­ed.

Cepep re­peat­ed­ly claimed that it was seek­ing fund­ing to make pay­ments to con­trac­tors hired by it.

Shade Con­struc­tion sued the State com­pa­ny in Sep­tem­ber 2017 and served the court fil­ings on it us­ing reg­is­tered post.

It ap­plied for a de­fault judge­ment af­ter Cepep al­leged­ly failed to file an ap­pear­ance in the al­lot­ted time un­der the Civ­il Pro­ceed­ings Rules, which gov­ern how civ­il lit­i­ga­tion is man­aged.

The ap­pli­ca­tion was grant­ed by the As­sis­tant Reg­is­trar in Oc­to­ber 2017.

In Jan­u­ary 2018, Cepep ap­plied to set aside the de­fault judge­ment based on is­sues it raised with the ser­vice of the law­suit.

While the judge ruled that Cepep had a rea­son­able prospect of suc­cess in de­fend­ing the case, he ruled that he could not set aside the judge­ment or ex­tend the time for it to file its de­fence, as it did not act dili­gent­ly when it found out what tran­spired.

In the judge­ment, Jus­tice Pem­ber­ton ruled that the judge got it plain­ly wrong when he re­fused to ex­er­cise his dis­cre­tion in the case. She al­so ruled that the As­sis­tant Reg­is­trar should not have grant­ed the de­fault judge­ment, as the dead­line for Cepep to reg­is­ter an ap­pear­ance was mis­cal­cu­lat­ed and had not, in fact, elapsed when Shade Con­struc­tion made the ap­pli­ca­tion.

“A de­fen­dant ought not to be prej­u­diced by an overzeal­ous claimant who has filed a pre­ma­ture re­quest for de­fault judge­ment,” she said.

As part of its de­ci­sion in the case, the ap­peal pan­el re­mit­ted the case to an­oth­er High Court Judge to de­ter­mine af­ter a tri­al.

Cepep was rep­re­sent­ed by El­ton Prescott, SC, Farai Hove-Ma­sai­sai and Ibo Jones. Les­ley-Ann Lucky-Sama­roo rep­re­sent­ed Shade Con­struc­tion.