A High Court Judge has re­solved a pro­tract­ed le­gal dis­pute be­tween two fam­i­lies over con­trol of a large par­cel of land in Bal­main, Cou­va.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment, late last month, Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams up­held a law­suit brought by Vi­jai Ma­hadeo against Pooran, Je­re­mi­ah, and Gan­ga Roopc­hand and sev­en of their rel­a­tives in­clud­ing oth­er sib­lings and their chil­dren.

The law­suit cen­tred around own­er­ship of the land at Pine Vil­lage, Cou­va.

In the law­suit, Ma­hadeo, through his lawyer Kings­ley Wales­by, claimed that he pur­chased the land from the Roopchands' grand­moth­er in 1979.

He claimed that he built a house on a por­tion of the land and cul­ti­vat­ed the re­main­der.

He claimed that he and his rel­a­tives moved out of the house but con­tin­ued to grow food crops on some of the land.

He claimed that he re­built the house on the land in 2008.

He filed the case as he claimed that the Roopchands en­croached on parts of the prop­er­ty where they con­struct­ed sev­er­al homes. He al­so claimed that they al­so de­stroyed crops that he and his fam­i­ly plant­ed and dam­aged a gate he had erect­ed.

Ma­hadeo died be­fore the case went to tri­al and his son Vashisht was al­lowed to con­tin­ue it on his be­half.

In de­fence of the case, the Roopchands claimed they in­her­it­ed the land from their de­ceased fa­ther Roopchan Ar­joon.

They claimed that Ar­joon was gift­ed por­tions of the land by his moth­er, who Ma­hadeo had claimed sold it to him.

They con­tend­ed that Ar­joon lived and plant­ed on the land since the 1950s.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams ruled that Ar­joon was not in pos­ses­sion of the con­test­ed land for decades as claimed by his rel­a­tives.

She took is­sue with the deed of con­veyance re­lied on by the Roopchands, un­der which the ex­ecu­tor of Ar­joon's es­tate sought to trans­fer the con­test­ed land to them.

"This deed pur­port­ed to trans­fer more than what Roopchan Ar­joon had and af­ter his death, his es­tate was pos­sessed," she said.

She al­so found that the trans­fer was done de­spite there not be­ing such a pro­vi­sion in Ar­joon's will.

In re­solv­ing the case, Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams or­dered the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al to ex­punge the deed.

She al­so grant­ed an in­junc­tion com­pelling the Roopchands to va­cate the land and a per­ma­nent in­junc­tion pre­vent­ing them from re­turn­ing or in­ter­fer­ing with the Ma­hadeos and their crops.

While the Ma­hadeos were seek­ing sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion for the pur­port­ed dam­age to their crops dur­ing the course of the land dis­pute, Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams on­ly or­dered $5,000 in nom­i­nal dam­ages for tres­pass.

"The claimant did not ad­duce any ev­i­dence as to how they ar­rived at the fig­ures or that these trees even ex­ist­ed," she said.

She did or­der $31,500 in spe­cial dam­ages, which rep­re­sents the costs of re­plac­ing the au­to­mat­ic gate that was dam­aged dur­ing the dis­pute.

The two of the 10 mem­bers of the Roopc­hand fam­i­ly that chose to par­tic­i­pate in the case were rep­re­sent­ed by Samuel Saun­ders.