Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Break­fast Shed will re­main open while its le­gal bat­tle with the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (Ude­cott) pro­ceeds, af­ter the High Court or­dered that an ex­ist­ing in­junc­tion re­main in place un­til a full tri­al in Jan­u­ary 2027.

The rul­ing, de­liv­ered yes­ter­day, pre­serves the cur­rent op­er­a­tions of the his­toric food hub on Wright­son Road and pre­vents any im­me­di­ate evic­tion ac­tion.

Pres­i­dent of the Femmes du Chalet Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Lim­it­ed, Robert Le Hunte, wel­comed the de­ci­sion, say­ing it pro­vides sta­bil­i­ty for ven­dors and pa­trons who de­pend on the fa­cil­i­ty.

Le Hunte was rep­re­sent­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel Kei­th Scot­land, as­sist­ed by at­tor­ney Al­liyah Cave, while Ude­cott was rep­re­sent­ed by Ger­ald Ramdeen.

The co-op­er­a­tive main­tains that it holds an eq­ui­table lease over the prop­er­ty and is not a month-to-month ten­ant that can be re­moved through a sim­ple no­tice to quit.

In writ­ten sub­mis­sions, the Break­fast Shed ar­gued that doc­u­ments pre­pared by Ude­cott, in­clud­ing a draft lease and cor­re­spon­dence from its chief le­gal of­fi­cer, sup­port its claim to a long-term lease arrange­ment.

The co-op­er­a­tive al­so re­ject­ed claims that it de­layed bring­ing le­gal ac­tion, ar­gu­ing that its cause of ac­tion on­ly arose af­ter Ude­cott served a no­tice to quit on March 6 this year.

The law­suit was filed 53 days lat­er.

Le Hunte said the dis­pute ex­tends be­yond un­paid rent and con­cerns the preser­va­tion of a near­ly cen­tu­ry-old in­sti­tu­tion.

He not­ed that ven­dors had op­er­at­ed for more than 75 years at the site now oc­cu­pied by the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel be­fore re­lo­cat­ing in the na­tion­al in­ter­est to fa­cil­i­tate de­vel­op­ment.

He said the co-op­er­a­tive has paid more than $4 mil­lion to Ude­cott T&TEC and WASA over the years and ar­gued that long­stand­ing fi­nan­cial arrange­ments, in­clud­ing util­i­ty charges, should be con­sid­ered as part of the mat­ter.

The Break­fast Shed fur­ther con­tends that an in­cor­rect in­dus­tri­al elec­tric­i­ty clas­si­fi­ca­tion re­sult­ed in over­charges span­ning 18 years that ex­ceed the al­leged rental ar­rears of $1.94 mil­lion.

Le Hunte said un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the case has placed strain on ven­dors and their fam­i­lies, but the court’s de­ci­sion of­fers tem­po­rary re­lief while the mat­ter pro­ceeds.

He al­so point­ed to a re­cov­ery plan de­vel­oped by a new­ly ap­point­ed board un­der the Com­mis­sion­er for Co-op­er­a­tive De­vel­op­ment, aimed at strength­en­ing gov­er­nance, ad­dress­ing debts and en­sur­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

He said the plan has not yet been for­mal­ly pre­sent­ed to Ude­cott.

Ex­press­ing grat­i­tude to his le­gal team, Le Hunte thanked Scot­land and Cave for their rep­re­sen­ta­tion and al­so ac­knowl­edged the ear­li­er work of Ken­neth Brown.

“The right claimed is the right to re­main in oc­cu­pa­tion on the terms promised, and no award of dam­ages af­ter the fact of evic­tion re­stores the So­ci­ety to that po­si­tion,” the co-op­er­a­tive said in its writ­ten sub­mis­sions.

The full tri­al is sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 2027.