A man from south Trinidad has lost his law­suit against Petrotrin and its suc­ces­sor Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny over un­paid rent for two pipelines on his land.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment yes­ter­day High Court Judge West­min James re­ject­ed the case brought by Shiv­anand Seenath against both com­pa­nies.

In the law­suit, Seenath claimed that the com­pa­nies owed a to­tal of $13,366,725.38 in rent from 1991 and 2021.

He claimed that he and his fa­ther held dis­cus­sions with the com­pa­nies over the is­sue but the of­fers to set­tle the debt were "woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate".

The rental val­ue claimed in the law­suit was based on an as­sess­ment by a cer­ti­fied val­u­a­tor.

In de­fence of the law­suit, the com­pa­nies claimed that Seenath was not en­ti­tled to rent as the orig­i­nal own­er of the land, who was in con­trol of it when the pipelines were in­stalled in 1967, re­tained the right to any mines or min­er­als on the land.

The com­pa­nies al­so con­tend­ed that Seenath should be barred from pur­su­ing the claim due to his de­lay in bring­ing it.

They point­ed to the Pipelines Act, which gives a one-year time lim­it for com­pen­sa­tion claims, and the Lim­i­ta­tion of Cer­tain Ac­tions Act, which pre­cludes claims for un­law­ful use and oc­cu­pa­tion from be­ing brought af­ter four years.

The com­pa­nies al­so con­tend­ed that they ac­quired rights to the strip of land the pipelines are on through ad­verse pos­ses­sion as they were in con­tin­u­ous and undis­put­ed oc­cu­pa­tion for over 16 years.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice James analysed con­veyanc­ing doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to the land from as far back as 1943.

He ruled that the com­pa­nies were cor­rect in their con­tention over the orig­i­nal own­er re­tain­ing the rights to min­er­als.

"The Claimant is un­der a mis­con­cep­tion that by virtue of the Deed he was en­ti­tled to re­ceive oc­cu­pa­tion­al rent and dam­ages done in the ex­er­cise of any of the said pow­ers from the De­fen­dants," he said.

He claimed that Seenath is en­ti­tled to take sep­a­rate le­gal ac­tion against the orig­i­nal own­er for com­pen­sa­tion.

Jus­tice James point­ed out that while com­pa­nies, which op­er­at­ed the pipelines be­fore Petrotrin and Her­itage, paid rent to Seenath's fa­ther, none was paid for 31 years while the two com­pa­nies were in con­trol.

He ruled that Seenath's rights were ex­tin­guished by the com­pa­ny's con­tin­u­ous oc­cu­pa­tion with­out pay­ing rent.

"An act of ne­go­ti­a­tions can­not be re­gard­ed as suf­fi­cient so as to break the con­ti­nu­ity of the De­fen­dants' pos­ses­sion and it does not stop a lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od from run­ning," he said.

As part of his de­ci­sion, Jus­tice James or­dered Seenath to pay the com­pa­nies $301,183.63 in le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the law­suit.

Seenath was rep­re­sent­ed by Reagel Ja­groop and Lau­ris­sa Ho­sein. The com­pa­nies were rep­re­sent­ed by Roger Kawals­ingh, and Ash­ley Roopchans­ingh.