Derek Achong

A con­struc­tion com­pa­ny has lost its ap­peal over a judge’s de­ci­sion to re­ject its law­suit against the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) for al­most $12 mil­lion in ad­di­tion­al fees for a State hous­ing project.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­men­ton Tues­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Gre­go­ry Smith, Vasheist Kokaram and Maria Wil­son dis­missed Dip­con En­gi­neer­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed’s ap­peal against the State project man­age­ment agency.

In its judg­ment, the ap­peal pan­el ruled that High Court Judge Ricky Rahim did not get it wrong when he dis­missed Dip­con En­gi­neer­ing’s case in late No­vem­ber 2017.

The le­gal dis­pute be­tween the par­ties stems from a con­tract to per­form en­gi­neer­ing ser­vices at the sec­ond phase of the Orop­une Gar­dens hous­ing project, signed be­tween them in March 2003.

In Jan­u­ary 2010, Ude­cott pro­posed mak­ing an $18,816,233.44 pay­ment in full and fi­nal set­tle­ment for the ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the com­pa­ny on the project.

The com­pa­ny claimed that it was owed an ad­di­tion­al $11,255,800 as it had to in­crease the use of its heavy equip­ment dur­ing con­struc­tion be­tween 2003 and 2006.

While Ude­cott claimed that its set­tle­ment of­fer in­clud­ed $3.5 mil­lion for the ad­di­tion­al work, it still agreed to con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions with the com­pa­ny over the is­sue.

In the law­suit, the com­pa­ny claimed that al­though its quo­ta­tion was ac­knowl­edged and agreed to by Ude­cott’s then-cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Bran­don Primus and its civ­il en­gi­neer At­i­ba De Souza, it did not re­ceive the pay­ment.

In his de­ci­sion, Rahim ruled that ac­cep­tance of Ude­cott’s set­tle­ment of­fer did not mean that it con­ced­ed its claim for the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment.

How­ev­er, he ruled that the al­leged oral agree­ment to make the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment was not legal­ly bind­ing as the Ude­cott of­fi­cials could not make the de­ci­sion with­out the ap­proval of its board.

In up­hold­ing Rahim’s de­ci­sion, Kokaram, who wrote the Ap­peal Court’s judg­ment, not­ed that he (Rahim) was not “plain­ly wrong” to make the find­ings that he did.

Kokaram not­ed that while pay­ments on the orig­i­nal con­tract did not re­quire board ap­proval, the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment did be­cause it did not abide by the pro­ce­dure un­der the con­tract.

Dip­con En­gi­neer­ing was rep­re­sent­ed by Ter­rence Bharath and An­dre Le Blanc, while Ravin­dra Nan­ga and Alana Bisses­sar rep­re­sent­ed Ude­cott.