Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A re­tired project man­ag­er of Trinci­ty has sued the trustees of the An­gli­can Church in the dio­cese of T&T for al­most $200,000 in al­leged­ly un­paid fees for work on its shop­ping com­plex in Cou­va. 

Kendal Lind­say’s breach of con­tract case was filed in late Feb­ru­ary and it came up for case man­age­ment be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad on Thurs­day. 

Dur­ing the brief hear­ing, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad gave the par­ties di­rec­tions for fur­ther fil­ings in the case and ad­journed it to No­vem­ber 20. 

In his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Lind­say claimed that in late 2017, he en­tered in­to an oral agree­ment with Ernest Williams, the then-chair­man of the man­age­ment board of the com­plex, to pro­vide his ser­vices on two projects at the com­plex. 

One of the projects was the con­struc­tion of a $4.5 mil­lion build­ing to house a pop­u­lar cof­fee chain, while the oth­er con­cerned $800,000 in im­prove­ment works for the com­plex’s waste wa­ter treat­ment plant. 

He claimed that un­der the agree­ment, he was re­tired to send his $20,000 month­ly in­voice to the en­gi­neer­ing firm hired for both projects. 

He claimed that he was paid for sev­er­al months but even­tu­al­ly stopped work­ing in Jan­u­ary 2020 as he did not re­ceive pay­ments for ten months. 

Lind­say claimed he had sev­er­al meet­ings with the com­plex’s of­fi­cials but was forced to file the law­suit as there was no res­o­lu­tion. 

In its de­fence, the trustees’ lawyer Re­nee John­cil­la ac­cept­ed that Lind­say per­formed some work on the project but claimed that he failed to per­form all the re­quired du­ties, which even­tu­al­ly had to be ful­filled by an­oth­er mem­ber of the man­age­ment board for the com­plex. 

It al­so claimed that Williams en­tered the agree­ment with Lind­say with­out seek­ing board ap­proval.

It al­so con­tend­ed that Lind­say ac­cept­ed that 60 per­cent of his fees were re­lat­ed to the wa­ter treat­ment plant while the re­main­der was for his work on the new build­ing. 

The trustees filed a counter-claim, in which it con­tend­ed that Lind­say was over­paid $29,000, as he al­leged­ly sought to claim the full fee when work on the build­ing was com­plet­ed. 

Lind­say was rep­re­sent­ed by Matthew Mc Meo and Marielle Coop­er-Leach.