Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) has been grant­ed per­mis­sion to evict a woman from a house in Ch­agua­nas she has been un­law­ful­ly oc­cu­py­ing for over a decade. 

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment on Fri­day, High Court Judge Ricky Rahim up­held HDC’s case against Es­ther Cruick­shank over con­trol of the prop­er­ty in Ed­in­burgh 500. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the law­suit dealt with a prop­er­ty that the HDC leased to a fam­i­ly for 30 years in 1990 to con­struct a home. 

Af­ter the fam­i­ly left the lot va­cant, the HDC con­struct­ed a home on it for the fam­i­ly in 2012. 

The HDC on­ly learned that the house was be­ing oc­cu­pied by Cruick­shank and not the fam­i­ly five years lat­er when it sought to re­new the fam­i­ly’s lease for 199 years in 2017. 

Al­though the HDC in­formed Cruick­shank that she was oc­cu­py­ing the prop­er­ty il­le­gal­ly she de­nied any wrong­do­ing. 

Cruick­shank claimed that in ear­ly 2012 she met with for­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and re­quest­ed his as­sis­tance in find­ing hous­ing as she had just left an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship. 

She claimed that she worked on a project with a com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist on aban­doned and van­dalised hous­es in the com­mu­ni­ty and point­ed out the house to Mooni­lal. 

She claimed that Mooni­lal gave her oral per­mis­sion to oc­cu­py the house and she spent over $100,000 to make it hab­it­able. 

She claimed that Mooni­lal in­tro­duced her to the HDC’s then-man­ag­er of al­lo­ca­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion Lau­ren Ann Legall to as­sist. 

While she ad­mit­ted that Legall told her about the prop­er­ty be­ing leased to the fam­i­ly, she claimed that she (Legall) as­sured her that the prop­er­ty could still be as­signed to her. 

In his judg­ment, Jus­tice Rahim not­ed that while Cruick­shank made a hous­ing ap­pli­ca­tion to the HDC in 2003, it re­mained dor­mant un­til 2014 when she was in­ter­viewed. 

He ruled that she did not go past that stage and her ap­pli­ca­tion es­sen­tial­ly re­mained dor­mant. 

While Jus­tice Rahim ruled that the Hous­ing Min­is­ter did have the pow­er to in­struct the HDC to as­sign hous­ing in spe­cial and emer­gency cas­es, he not­ed that Mooni­lal did not make any of­fi­cial de­ci­sion in re­la­tion to Cruick­shank based on its records. 

How­ev­er, he took is­sue with the fact that she did not seek to have Mooni­lal or Legall to tes­ti­fy in her de­fence. 

“The de­fen­dant’s ev­i­dence on this is­sue is in the view of the court poor at best,” Jus­tice Rahim said. 

While he not­ed that Cruick­shank’s al­leged con­ver­sa­tions with Mooni­lal ex­press­ing in­ter­est in the prop­er­ty were plau­si­ble, he ques­tioned her claim that he oral­ly as­signed it to her. 

“The court does not how­ev­er ac­cept that it is more like­ly than not that a Min­is­ter would make the call to have a unit al­lo­cat­ed to a per­son with­out as­cer­tain­ing the facts of own­er­ship of the unit or the land up­on which it stood,” he said. 

“In all the ev­i­dence amounts to noth­ing more than ut­ter­ances by the de­fen­dant (which them­selves ap­pear con­tra­dic­to­ry to some ex­tent), that the Min­is­ter ei­ther rec­om­mend­ed or al­lo­cat­ed the unit to her,” he added. 

While Jus­tice Rahim ruled that the HDC was en­ti­tled to evict her, he dis­missed its claim for com­pen­sa­tion for tres­pass. 

“The court is of the view that none ought to be award­ed in light of the work done to the unit by the de­fen­dant which work ben­e­fits the claimant,” he said. 

As part of his de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Rahim is­sued an in­junc­tion bar­ring Cruick­shank from the prop­er­ty. She was al­so or­dered to pay the HDC $28,000 in le­gal costs. 

Jus­tice Rahim ap­plied a 30-day stay of ex­e­cu­tion on his judg­ment. 

The HDC was rep­re­sent­ed by Ker­wyn Gar­cia, SC, while Asha Watkins-Montserin rep­re­sent­ed Cruick­shank.