The Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) has or­dered that a mat­ter more suit­ed to be dealt with by the High Court be sent back to that court for a new tri­al.In a rul­ing de­liv­ered in the case of Gayadin et al v Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed, the CCJ found that the ap­pel­lants failed to sat­is­fy var­i­ous fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions owed to Re­pub­lic Bank which re­sult­ed in the bank ini­ti­at­ing le­gal ac­tion in the High Court of Guyana to re­cov­er the mon­ey owed to it.

The bank was suc­cess­ful in its ac­tion in the High Court but the case made its way to the Court of Ap­peal which de­cid­ed that it did not have the ju­ris­dic­tion to hear the mat­ter. The ap­pel­lants then sought per­mis­sion to bring an ap­peal against that de­ci­sion to the CCJ.

Ad­ju­di­cat­ing the Borow­ers' ap­pli­ca­tion on writ­ten sub­mis­sions, the CCJ ex­am­ined the ba­sis on which the Court of Ap­peal de­cid­ed it could not en­ter­tain the ap­peal and found that the Court of Ap­peal was wrong not to hear the mat­ter. The CCJ held that sec­tion 6 of the Guyana Court of Ap­peal Act pro­vides an av­enue through which the ap­pel­lants could have had their ap­peal heard.The CCJ sent the mat­ter back to the High Court for a fresh tri­al and or­dered each par­ty to bear its own costs.

The mat­ter was presided over by Mr Jus­tice Nel­son along with Jus­tices Saun­ders and An­der­son. Tim­o­thy Jonas filed sub­mis­sions on be­half of the ap­pel­lants. Ka­mal Ramkar­ran filed sub­mis­sions on be­half of Re­pub­lic Bank