Derek Achong

The Court of Ap­peal has ruled that the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny's (NGC) as­set freez­ing or­der against mega-con­trac­tor ,Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices (SIS) over the con­tro­ver­sial Beetham Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant should be re­moved.

While the court's de­ci­sion ef­fec­tive­ly quashed the in­junc­tion which pre­vent­ed the com­pa­ny and its sub­sidiary, Rain For­est Re­sorts Ltd (RFRL), from dis­pos­ing of $180 mil­lion of its as­sets be­fore ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings over the project are com­plet­ed, the judges said that NGC was en­ti­tled to a tem­po­rary stay of the judg­ment.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment at the Hall of Jus­tice yes­ter­day, three ap­pel­late j agreed with SIS's at­tor­neys that NGC's claim should be dis­missed as the State-owned com­pa­ny had failed to meet strict time­lines for civ­il law­suits set in the Civ­il Pro­ceed­ings Rules.

Ap­pel­late judges Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine, Ju­dith Jones and Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar over­turned a pre­vi­ous de­ci­sion of High Court Judge Joan Charles, who in June re­ject­ed SIS' com­plaints over the fail­ure of NGC to set a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence af­ter the in­junc­tion had been grant­ed on De­cem­ber 23 last year, as re­quired by the rules. NGC had dis­put­ed the claim.

NGC's lead lawyer, Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, yes­ter­day re­quest­ed the court reim­pose the in­junc­tion as her client de­cid­ed whether to lodge a fi­nal ap­peal in the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil.

"The court has a du­ty to con­tin­ue the in­junc­tion to en­sure that the is­sue is not ren­dered nu­ga­to­ry as we pur­sue the ap­peal," she said.

RFRL's at­tor­ney, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, op­posed Peake's ap­pli­ca­tion, say­ing her client could not seek im­me­di­ate­ly a fresh or con­tin­ued in­junc­tion un­til it had ap­plied to the court for per­mis­sion to make its fi­nal ap­peal.

Nar­ine in­stead sug­gest­ed a tem­po­rary in­junc­tion be grant­ed un­til NGC filed its ap­pli­ca­tion for leave to ap­peal and for a per­ma­nent stay pend­ing the even­tu­al out­come of the ap­peal.

The case was ad­journed to Jan­u­ary 13, when the ap­pli­ca­tion for the per­ma­nent stay is ex­pect­ed to be heard. The dis­pute be­tween the par­ties start­ed last year af­ter de­lays in the US$162,055,318.77 project, which was due to be com­plet­ed on Oc­to­ber 21.

The con­tract was even­tu­al­ly ter­mi­nat­ed on No­vem­ber 24 af­ter SIS re­port­ed­ly in­formed NGC it was un­able to con­tin­ue with the work "un­der the cur­rent cir­cum­stances and cur­rent con­di­tions of the con­tract."

Ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings have since been ini­ti­at­ed to re­cov­er the $400 mil­lion that was al­leged­ly ad­vanced to the com­pa­nies for the project.

SIS was rep­re­sent­ed by Neal Bis­nath.