Derek Achong

The Court of Ap­peal yes­ter­day ruled that five Cli­co Ex­ec­u­tive Flex­i­ble Pre­mi­um An­nu­ity (EF­PA) pol­i­cy­hold­ers were not en­ti­tled to in­ter­im and pre-emp­tive le­gal costs in the on­go­ing bid to re­cov­er their in­vest­ments from the fi­nan­cial­ly trou­bled con­glom­er­ate. In dis­miss­ing the pol­i­cy­hold­ers' ap­peal the court agreed with the de­ci­sion of Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad, which he de­liv­ered on March 29 in the Port-of-Spain High Court. In his 49-page rul­ing, Ram­per­sad said the court had no dis­cre­tion to in­ter­fere with the fund with­out re­gard to the risk-as­sess­ment fac­tor. He said any such or­der would be sub­ject to jus­ti­fied crit­i­cism, as such pay­ment would have been made with­out con­sid­er­ing the over­all ef­fect on the en­tire Statu­to­ry Fund. Sit­ting on the ap­peal pan­el for the mat­ters were Jus­tices Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo, Humphrey Stollmey­er and Gre­go­ry Smith.

In their ap­pli­ca­tion, the pol­i­cy­hold­ers asked to be paid out of the Statu­to­ry Fund to pur­sue their lit­i­ga­tion fur­ther. The Gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished the fund af­ter the com­pa­ny's col­lapsed in 2009. The pol­i­cy­hold­ers ap­pealed the de­ci­sion, through their at­tor­ney, Se­nior Coun­sel Dr Claude Den­bow, and were chal­leng­ing Ram­per­sad's find­ings un­der Sec­tions 40 and 115 of the In­sur­ance Act. The pol­i­cy­hold­ers-Per­cy Far­rell, Ma­ri­na In­als­ingh, re­tired UWI pro­fes­sor Gor­don Rohlehr, David Day­al and Michael Alexan­der-con­tend that Jus­tice Ram­per­sad erred when con­sid­er­ing the leg­is­la­tion. While mak­ing sub­mis­sions be­fore the three judges on Tues­day, Se­nior Coun­sel Regi­nald Ar­mour, rep­re­sent­ing the Cen­tral Bank, de­scribed the pol­i­cy­hold­ers' ap­pli­ca­tion for pre-emp­tive costs as mis­con­ceived. Ar­mour told the three-mem­ber pan­el the costs should not be al­lowed, since the pol­i­cy­hold­ers' case was "hos­tile lit­i­ga­tion." The State's lawyer in the mat­ter, British Queen's Coun­sel Al­lan New­man, al­so op­posed the ap­pli­ca­tion, claim­ing the group was seek­ing an im­prac­ti­cal or­der from the court. Al­so rep­re­sent­ing the State was Kelvin Ramkis­sion while at­tor­ney Don­na Den­bow al­so ap­peared for the pol­i­cy­hold­ers.