The Ap­peal Court will de­liv­er its de­ci­sion on Au­gust 8 on the High­way Re-route Move­ment (HRM)'s ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion to stop the Debe to Mon De­sir seg­ment of the Point Fortin High­way.Ap­peal Court judges Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine, Gre­go­ry Smith and Prakash Moo­sai have been asked to over­turn the rul­ing of High Court judge James Aboud who re­fused the HRM's ini­tial re­quest in May.

Dur­ing an ap­peal hear­ing ear­li­er this month, Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, head of the State's le­gal team, op­posed the ap­pli­ca­tion.He cit­ed the group's un­war­rant­ed de­lay be­tween the fil­ing of its sub­stan­tive law­suit in Au­gust 2012 and the ap­pli­ca­tion, which the HRM sought dur­ing a case-man­age­ment con­fer­ence last Sep­tem­ber.Mar­tineau sub­mit­ted the in­junc­tion would lead to cost over­runs on the project be­cause of agree­ments with third par­ty con­trac­tors.

He has al­so asked the court to pro­nounce on the be­hav­iour of the group's leader, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh, who was ar­rest­ed on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions for at­tempt­ing to block ve­hi­cles and ma­chin­ery at the con­struc­tion site.State at­tor­neys al­so have filed a cross-ap­peal, in which they are ask­ing the court to strike out por­tions of Aboud's judg­ment, in which he is al­leged to have made fi­nal rul­ings on key is­sues of the sub­stan­tive case which is yet to go on tri­al.

In re­sponse, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the HRM con­tend­ed they did not de­lay in seek­ing the in­junc­tion as their ap­pli­ca­tion was in re­sponse to in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty at the site.Se­nior Coun­sel Fyard Ho­sein de­nied his client, Kublals­ingh, en­gaged in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty, say­ing he was ex­er­cis­ing his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to protest.Ho­sein al­so ar­gued that Aboud's rul­ings on the key is­sues were on­ly pro­vi­sion­al and his opin­ion might change af­ter hear­ing more de­tailed sub­mis­sions dur­ing the tri­al.The State is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, Kelvin Ramkisson, Ger­ald Ramdeen and Shas­tri Roberts.The HRM le­gal team in­cludes Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, and Rishi Dass.