A promi­nent busi­ness­man from San­gre Grande has scored a vic­to­ry in a pro­tract­ed le­gal bat­tle over his ac­qui­si­tion of a prop­er­ty. 

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment yes­ter­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er, Mal­colm Holdip, and Car­la Brown-An­toine ruled that a High Court Judge erred when she up­held a law­suit brought by Nor­bert Her­nan­dez against busi­ness­man Kei­th Quam­i­na and one of his com­pa­nies, Woods En­ter­prise Hold­ings Lim­it­ed. 

Jus­tice Brown-An­toine, who de­liv­ered the pan­el's de­ci­sion, said: "This is one of those rare cas­es where the tri­al judge reached a con­clu­sion and there was no ev­i­dence to sup­port it."

The law­suit re­lat­ed to the con­trol of a par­cel of land in San­gre Grande, lo­cat­ed near an­oth­er prop­er­ty owned by Quam­i­na. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, the land was owned by Monte Cristo Es­tates Lim­it­ed and was leased to the now-de­funct San­gre Grande Mu­tu­al Help Friend­ly So­ci­ety. 

Af­ter the so­ci­ety's lease end­ed in 1980, it con­tin­ued to oc­cu­py the land and the build­ing on it with­out pay­ing rent and with­out the com­pa­ny's per­mis­sion. 

Quam­i­na claimed that he joined the so­ci­ety in 1992 and was tasked with per­form­ing re­pairs on the build­ing. 

He claimed that in 1995 he took con­trol of the build­ing af­ter the so­ci­ety va­cat­ed it. He even­tu­al­ly pur­chased the build­ing from the so­ci­ety for $28,000 in 1997. 

He claimed that he per­formed sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment work on the build­ing, which he used to house a plumb­ing and elec­tri­cal store and a car rental busi­ness owned by him. 

Her­nan­dez pur­chased the prop­er­ty from Monte Cristo in 2003. 

He claimed that the build­ing and land were un­oc­cu­pied at the time of pur­chase. 

Her­nan­dez claimed that he left the prop­er­ty va­cant but chal­lenged Quam­i­na af­ter he (Quam­i­na) al­leged­ly took pos­ses­sion and be­gan con­struc­tion work in 2004. 

Rul­ing on the case in 2018, High Court Judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo found that Quam­i­na had not claimed own­er­ship of the prop­er­ty through ad­verse pos­ses­sion, as she found that he was not in ex­clu­sive and un­con­test­ed con­trol of the prop­er­ty for 16 years be­fore Her­nan­dez filed the case in 2013. 

In up­hold­ing the ap­peal, Jus­tice Brown-An­toine found that in rul­ing that Quam­i­na on­ly be­gan oc­cu­py­ing the prop­er­ty around the time that he was chal­lenged by Her­nan­dez, her col­league failed to con­sid­er util­i­ty bills paid by Quam­i­na pri­or to that time. 

She al­so ruled that the judge failed to con­sid­er that Quam­i­na had paid land and build­ing tax­es for the build­ing. 

"It was more prob­a­ble than not that the Ap­pel­lants were in sole oc­cu­pa­tion of the dis­put­ed lands pri­or to June 10, 1997, from as ear­ly as 1993, up to the time of the fil­ing of this ac­tion on June 11, 2013, and there­fore the Re­spon­dent nev­er took ac­tu­al pos­ses­sion of the lands," Jus­tice Brown-An­toine said. 

As part of its judg­ment, the ap­peal pan­el de­clared that Quam­i­na is en­ti­tled to the land and or­dered Her­nan­dez to ex­e­cute a deed, at Quam­i­na's ex­pense, to re­flect such. 

Her­nan­dez was al­so or­dered to pay Quam­i­na and the com­pa­ny's le­gal costs for the ini­tial law­suit and sub­se­quent ap­peal. 

Quam­i­na and his com­pa­ny were rep­re­sent­ed by Yaseen Ahmed and Tara Lutch­man. Her­nan­dez was rep­re­sent­ed by Mar­sha King.