A re­al es­tate de­vel­op­er will have to wait un­til the end of the month to learn the fate of her ap­peal over an in­vest­ment com­pa­ny be­ing al­lowed to sell her $19.5 mil­lion prop­er­ty to its re­tire­ment fund to clear her debt.

Ap­pel­late Judges Char­maine Pem­ber­ton and Vasheist Kokaram re­served their de­ci­sion in Leonara Deslau­ri­ers' ap­peal against Guardian As­set Man­age­ment (GAM) af­ter a vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day. 

In the ap­peal, Deslau­ri­ers is claim­ing that al­though High Court Judge Ricky Rahim pro­hib­it­ed GAM from pur­chas­ing the mul­ti-sto­ry com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty at Vic­to­ria Square in Port-of-Spain to dri­ve down its val­ue, he still cer­ti­fied its sale to Guardian De­fines Ben­e­fit Pen­sion Fund Plan.  Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on be­half of Deslau­ri­ers, Se­nior Coun­sel Ian Ben­jamin sug­gest­ed that GAM could have done more in or­der to at­tempt to get a high­er price for the prop­er­ty in­stead of the min­i­mum price pre­vi­ous­ly set by Jus­tice Rahim.  He sug­gest­ed that while Rahim on­ly or­der that the sale be ad­ver­tised GAM should have en­list­ed the help of re­al es­tate agents to bet­ter mar­ket the prop­er­ty. 

Jus­tice Pem­ber­ton ques­tioned the sug­ges­tion as she point­ed out that such as­sis­tance would come with a com­mis­sion. 

She al­so stat­ed that the prospect of at­tain­ing a high­er price may be spec­u­la­tive.

"May I re­mind you the state of the econ­o­my in this coun­try in 2020," Jus­tice Pem­ber­ton said. 

Ben­jamin al­so stat­ed that GAM had failed to in­form him of the prospec­tive sale with­in a rea­son­able time so his client could mount a chal­lenge. 

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, GAM's at­tor­ney Christo­pher Sieuc­hand stat­ed this his client strict­ly ad­hered to the or­der when it ad­ver­tised the prop­er­ty in 2018, 2019 and 2020 when it was even­tu­al­ly sold. 

While Sieuc­hand ad­mit­ted that some of the fund's trustees are of­fi­cials at GAM's par­ent com­pa­ny Guardian Group he not­ed that the sole ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the fund are the group's em­ploy­ees in­clud­ing those of GAM. He said that Jus­tice Rahim was cor­rect to rule that they were sep­a­rate le­gal en­ti­ties and was care­ful in his su­per­vi­sion of the en­tire sale process. 

The le­gal bat­tle be­tween Deslau­ri­ers and GAM stems from a $18.9 mil­lion loan that she and her hus­band David took to fund the Hevron Heights town­house de­vel­op­ment at Mendez Dri­ve, Champ Fleurs.

The cou­ple claimed that when GAM failed to ad­vance them ad­di­tion­al funds to com­plete the de­vel­op­ment in 2009, they suf­fered $25 mil­lion in loss­es with the prop­er­ty still in­com­plete. 

The Deslau­ri­ers con­tend­ed that the com­pa­ny failed to in­form them that it could not lend fur­ther mon­ey as it had a lend­ing lim­it un­like oth­er fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions. 

While GAM ad­mit­ted that it did not in­form them of the lend­ing lim­it, they claimed that the cou­ple nev­er re­vealed that ad­di­tion­al fund­ing would be re­quired. 

GAM's case against the cou­ple was up­held by Jus­tice Rahim, the Court of Ap­peal and the Privy Coun­cil with GAM be­ing grant­ed per­mis­sion to sell the in­com­plete de­vel­op­ment and the cou­ple's prop­er­ty at Vic­to­ria Square in or­der to clear the debt plus in­ter­est which stood at over $36 mil­lion in 2018. 

Dur­ing the course of their lit­i­ga­tion, the cou­ple claimed that the sale of the de­vel­op­ment could cov­er the loan with­out the need to sell the Vic­to­ria Square prop­er­ty. 

The ar­gu­ment was re­ject­ed by the Privy Coun­cil, who point­ed out that the cou­ple's val­u­a­tion for the de­vel­op­ment was in­flat­ed as it did not con­sid­er that po­ten­tial buy­ers who made de­posits on units would have to be re­paid by the pur­chas­er.