sto­ries by Derek Achong

The Court of Ap­peal has re­fused to grant Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) and its in­ter­net ser­vice provider sub­sidiary, Am­plia, con­di­tion­al per­mis­sion to pur­sue a fi­nal ap­peal against a law­suit over their fail­ure to pay $26.4 mil­lion to a na­tion­al fund to de­vel­op in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

Ap­pel­late Judges Gre­go­ry Smith, Vasheist Kokaram and Mal­colm Holdip made the de­ci­sion on Tues­day af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions from lawyers for the com­pa­ny and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT).

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on be­half of the com­pa­nies, Se­nior Coun­sel Mar­tin Daly sug­gest­ed that the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil should weigh in on the case, as it would help re­solve po­ten­tial dis­putes be­tween the par­ties which may arise in the fu­ture. 

TATT’s lawyer Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, dis­agreed, as she stat­ed that the ap­peal was with­out mer­it as the law­suit is a sim­ple debt re­cov­ery case. 

“Can any­one gen­er­al­ly dis­pute this? The law is clear,” Peake said. 

Smith, who de­liv­ered the pan­el’s de­ci­sion on the is­sue, agreed with TATT’s po­si­tion, as he point­ed out that the dis­pute be­tween the par­ties was not of gen­er­al or pub­lic im­por­tance. 

He not­ed that while TSTT and Am­plia chal­lenged TATT’s abil­i­ty to com­pel them to make the con­tri­bu­tion, oth­er telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions providers, who al­so hold con­ces­sions from TATT, did not join with the com­pa­nies in tak­ing the po­si­tion and made their re­quired con­tri­bu­tions af­ter be­ing no­ti­fied of their non-com­pli­ance. 

The Court of Ap­peal’s de­ci­sion on the is­sue does not leave the com­pa­nies with­out a life­line to con­tin­ue their le­gal chal­lenge, as they can de­cide whether they want to ap­ply di­rect­ly to the Privy Coun­cil for spe­cial leave to pur­sue the ap­peal. 

The com­pa­nies are seek­ing to chal­lenge a de­ci­sion of the Court of Ap­peal to re­in­state TATT’s case in Ju­ly. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, in March last year, TATT brought the law­suit against TSTT and Am­plia seek­ing to re­cov­er their over $26,467,445 un­paid con­tri­bu­tions to Uni­ver­sal Ser­vice Fund (USF). 
TSTT brought a pre­lim­i­nary chal­lenge to the law­suit as it claimed that TATT could not bring lit­i­ga­tion to re­cov­er the debt as it suf­fered no loss and dam­age. 

The ma­jor­i­ty State-owned com­pa­ny claimed that un­der the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act, which es­tab­lished TATT and the USF, TATT could on­ly seek to en­force com­pli­ance by ei­ther ad­vis­ing the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter to sus­pend or re­voke its con­ces­sion or by ini­ti­at­ing crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings. 

De­liv­er­ing a pre­lim­i­nary rul­ing on Feb­ru­ary 3, High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in up­held the chal­lenge and struck out the law­suit as she ruled that she did not have the ju­ris­dic­tion to hear it. 

The Court of Ap­peal ruled that Gob­in was wrong to do so as TATT had no rem­e­dy un­der the leg­is­la­tion to com­pel com­pli­ance from a con­ces­sion­aire. 

TATT was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ravi Heffes-Doon and Ra­jesh Ra­moutar while Christo­pher Sieuc­hand and Son­nel David-Longe ap­peared along­side Daly for TSTT and Am­plia.