Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A pro­mot­er has lost its case against a group of ri­vals and Niger­ian singer-song­writer Bur­na Boy, af­ter al­leg­ing they con­spired to hi­jack its bid to host a con­cert in De­cem­ber 2022.

In a rul­ing de­liv­ered yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Jacque­line Wil­son struck out the un­law­ful means con­spir­a­cy claim brought by Cash Mon­ey Broth­ers Pro­duc­tions.

Jus­tice Wil­son up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion by at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Shawn Moses and his com­pa­ny, SM En­ter­tain­ment Lim­it­ed, led by Chase Pe­gus, who ar­gued that the pro­ceed­ings could not be sus­tained be­cause Cash Mon­ey was not a reg­is­tered com­pa­ny, as it had claimed.

The judge agreed, find­ing that Cash Mon­ey was, in fact, a part­ner­ship un­der the Part­ner­ship Act.

In the law­suit, Cash Mon­ey sued Moses and his com­pa­ny; Dami­ni “Bur­na Boy” Ogu­lu; Jules So­bion and his com­pa­ny, Cae­sar’s Army Lim­it­ed; Ogu­lu’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Osi­ta Ugeh, and his com­pa­ny, Duke Con­cept LLC; Crys­tal Cun­ning­ham and her com­pa­ny, Twist­ed En­ter­tain­ment Bar­ba­dos Inc.; and Chris­t­ian Bern­hardt and his com­pa­ny, Unit­ed Tal­ent Agency LLC, which al­so rep­re­sents Ogu­lu.

Cash Mon­ey claimed that in Oc­to­ber 2022 it en­tered in­to an agree­ment with US-based Space­ship II Inc. for Gram­my Award-win­ning artiste Ogu­lu to per­form at a show it planned to host on De­cem­ber 16 that year.

It al­leged that a con­tract was draft­ed by Unit­ed Tal­ent and signed by its rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Michael Durham. How­ev­er, the con­tract was nev­er signed by Ogu­lu be­cause ne­go­ti­a­tions were still on­go­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the claim, So­bion cre­at­ed a What­sApp group to con­tin­ue the dis­cus­sions, and Durham shared in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to the pre­lim­i­nary agree­ments for Ogu­lu’s ap­pear­ance.

Cash Mon­ey al­leged that af­ter the in­for­ma­tion was shared, Bern­hardt frus­trat­ed its at­tempts to make pay­ments to se­cure Ogu­lu’s ap­pear­ance. The con­tract was sub­se­quent­ly ter­mi­nat­ed.

It fur­ther claimed that Moses, Bern­hardt and Cun­ning­ham then en­tered in­to a con­tract with Ogu­lu for him to per­form at a con­cert in Trinidad on the same night it had in­tend­ed to host its event.

The com­pa­ny al­leged that Moses, So­bion, Ugeh and Cun­ning­ham “sur­rep­ti­tious­ly” used in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by Durham to “fi­na­gle” the con­tract and un­just­ly en­rich them­selves from the con­cert’s prof­its.

Cash Mon­ey threat­ened le­gal ac­tion be­fore the con­cert, but the event pro­ceed­ed as sched­uled.

The de­fen­dants de­nied the al­le­ga­tions.

Cun­ning­ham ap­plied to have the case struck out, ar­gu­ing that the con­trac­tu­al dis­pute should be re­solved in the Unit­ed States, where the orig­i­nal agree­ments were made.

Bern­hardt and Unit­ed Tal­ent filed a sim­i­lar ap­pli­ca­tion, con­tend­ing that Cash Mon­ey had no valid grounds to bring the claim.

Jus­tice Wil­son ruled first on the ap­pli­ca­tion brought by Moses and SM En­ter­tain­ment, a de­ci­sion that al­so ben­e­fit­ed the oth­er de­fen­dants.

As a re­sult, the judge said there was no need to as­sess the mer­its of Cash Mon­ey’s al­le­ga­tions.

Cash Mon­ey was rep­re­sent­ed by Farai Hove Ma­sai­sai, Mari­ka Trim and Bernelle-Joy La Fou­cade.

Moses and SM En­ter­tain­ment were rep­re­sent­ed by Matthew Al­la­har, Math­ias Sylvester and Vikash Lal.

So­bion and Cae­sar’s Army Lim­it­ed were rep­re­sent­ed by Christo­pher George, Kyr­ia Roops­ingh and Anu­rad­ha Dean.

Bern­hardt and Unit­ed Tal­ent were rep­re­sent­ed by Shali­ni Camp­bell and Joia Re­ece, while Ste­fan Mungals­ingh rep­re­sent­ed Cun­ning­ham.

Al­though Ogu­lu was named as a de­fen­dant, he did not par­tic­i­pate in the pro­ceed­ings.