Derek Achong

The Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T's (Ude­cott) in­abil­i­ty to lo­cate doc­u­ments crit­i­cal to its mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar law­suit against its for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart and three of its for­mer ex­ec­u­tives, may po­ten­tial­ly weak­en its chances of suc­cess­ful­ly prov­ing its al­leged neg­li­gence in the man­age­ment of a con­tro­ver­sial mega-project.

The is­sue arose when the claim seek­ing to re­cov­er al­most $65 mil­lion for its al­leged breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ties in re­la­tion to the still in­com­plete Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my (BLCA), came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice An­dre des Vi­gnes in the Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day.

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Ude­cott, Hart and the for­mer ex­ec­u­tives – for­mer chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Nee­lan­da Ram­paul, for­mer vice-chair­man Dr Kr­ish­na Ba­hadoors­ingh and ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er, Busi­ness and Fi­nan­cial Op­er­a­tions, Ri­car­do O'Brien – were ini­tial­ly sched­uled to come to­geth­er at yes­ter­day's hear­ing to de­cide on a tri­al date for the case.

But when the mat­ter was called, at­tor­neys for the for­mer ex­ec­u­tives in­di­cat­ed their coun­ter­parts rep­re­sent­ing Ude­cott had failed to com­ply with dead­lines for dis­clos­ing key ev­i­dence in the claim, set by Des Vi­gnes and the Ap­peal Court dur­ing pre­vi­ous hear­ings in De­cem­ber and ear­li­er this year.The at­tor­neys in­di­cat­ed that with­out the doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing a spe­cial re­port in­to the op­er­a­tions of Ude­cott in man­ag­ing the projects, it would be dif­fi­cult for them to plan their clients' de­fences.

"I can't pre­pare a case in a vac­u­um," Ba­hadoors­ingh's at­tor­ney Col­in Kan­ga­loo said. De­spite Des Vi­gnes's sug­ges­tion that they pro­ceed with their sub­mis­sions in prepa­ra­tion for the pend­ing tri­al while await­ing the re­sults of Ude­cott's on­go­ing search for the doc­u­ments, the at­tor­neys held firm to their po­si­tion that they could not con­tin­ue un­til the is­sue was dealt with.In the law­suit, Ude­cott al­leges that the ex­ec­u­tives breached their du­ty to ex­er­cise skill, care and dili­gence in the man­age­ment of the BLCA project.

Since it was filed in May 2012, the law­suit has been hit with sev­er­al de­lays, caused by two am­mend­ments to the ini­tial claim, as well as sev­er­al pro­ce­dur­al ap­pli­ca­tions for both par­ties.

Search­es con­tin­ue

Con­ceived in 1999, the sta­di­um, part of the Tarou­ba Sport­ing Com­plex, was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in time to host match­es for the 2007 ICC Crick­et World Cup at the cost of $500 mil­lion. A com­bi­na­tion of mul­ti­ple de­lays, cost over­runs and in­creas­es in the price of build­ing ma­te­ri­als led the fi­nal cost of the project sky­rock­et­ing to al­most twice its orig­i­nal es­ti­mate.The mon­ey Ude­cott is seek­ing to re­cov­er, $65,680,978.88, rep­re­sents the bal­ance of the ad­vance pay­ments made to con­trac­tor Hafeez Kara­math Ltd for the project.

In re­sponse, Ude­cott's lawyer Les­ley Ann Lucky-Sama­roo in­di­cat­ed she and her team had al­ready done ex­ten­sive search­es of their client's records and were on­ly able to dis­close the doc­u­ments they were able to lo­cate. She al­so de­nied her client's in­abil­i­ty to find the doc­u­ments was a de­lib­er­ate ploy in the case.Des Vi­gnes did not seem to be sat­is­fied with their ef­forts.

"We ac­cept your best in­ten­tions but they have not searched every­where. There­fore, there are still a few places that can be searched," he said.Dur­ing a hear­ing of the case in De­cem­ber last year, Des Vi­gnes gave Ude­cott in­struc­tions on what doc­u­ments should be dis­closed and a time­line for do­ing so, while warn­ing that sanc­tions would be ap­plied for non-com­pli­ance with his or­der.

Af­ter lengthy dis­cus­sions on the is­sue yes­ter­day, the ex­ec­u­tives' at­tor­neys agreed to file sub­mis­sions on the pos­si­ble le­gal sanc­tions for Ude­cott, which they ini­tial­ly said may in­clude strik­ing out seg­ments of the cor­po­ra­tion's case where the miss­ing doc­u­ments were ref­er­enced.

At the end of the hear­ing, the at­tor­neys for the ex­ec­u­tives asked if their clients need­ed to be present at the next hear­ing of the case - a re­quire­ment un­der the Civ­il Pro­ceed­ings Rules 1998 -, which Des Vi­gnes chose to dis­pense with when at­tor­neys agreed that the clients' pres­ence was not nec­es­sary un­til the tri­al be­gan.Lucky-Sama­roo chose not op­pose the ap­pli­ca­tion for the waiv­er. The case will be next heard on Sep­tem­ber 17.