DEREK ACHONG
Senior Reporter
dereka.chong@guardian.co.tt
A construction company has lost its final appeal in a legal dispute over the termination of its quarrying contract.
Delivering a judgment on Thursday, five Law Lords of the United Kingdom-based Privy Council rejected the appeal brought by Woodford Construction Limited against Readymix (West Indies) Limited.
The dispute stemmed from a contract between the companies, which allowed Woodford to excavate and remove raw gravel (pitrun) from Readymix’s quarry.
In June 2015, Readymix terminated the contract on the basis that Woodford had not complied with the checking and verification procedure agreed to by the parties.
The action was not based on a written term of the contract but rather on an implied term requiring the parties to abide by the procedure.
Woodford filed a lawsuit but it was dismissed by High Court Judge Avason Quinlan-Williams in late 2018.
In January 2023, Appellate Judges Mira Dean-Armorer, Vasheist Kokaram, and Malcolm Holdip dismissed Woodford’s appeal and upheld their colleague’s judgment.
In its final appeal, Woodford claimed that the local courts wrongly decided the case.
It claimed that both courts wrongly found that it had stolen the pitrun by circumventing the verification procedure without making findings that it acted dishonestly.
Lady Ingrid Simler, who delivered the Board’s judgment, ruled that the decision of the local courts could not be faulted.
“Neither the judge nor the Court of Appeal made any error of law that vitiates the finding of fact made by the judge that Woodford removed pitrun without accounting for it, in circumstances importing dishonesty and that this justified termination of the contract,” Lady Simler said.
She claimed that the trial judge was entitled to make the finding of theft based on the evidence before her.
“Removal of pitrun without verification was no different to a customer with a credit account at a supermarket taking a full supermarket trolley out of the store with first presenting the items in the trolley at the till and having them checked off,” Lady Simler said.
“On the face of it, this is dishonest taking or stealing absent an alternative innocent explanation,” she added.
Lady Simler also rejected Woodford’s request to reconsider the evidence in the case despite the local courts making concurrent findings of fact.
She stated that it had not established an exceptional basis for doing so based on its case presented before the local courts.
“To the contrary, Woodford effectively invites the Board to revisit the issues considered at length by the trial judge and the Court of Appeal, in the hope of persuading the Board that those courts failed properly to evaluate the oral evidence in light of the documentary record,” she said.
Woodford was represented by Daniel Feetham, KC, and Rowan Pennington-Benton.
Readymix was represented by Jason Mootoo, SC, and Tamara Toolsie.
