A group of for­mer T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers, is ex­pect­ed to find out whether they can pur­sue their law­suit over FI­FA’s con­tro­ver­sial de­ci­sion to re­move and re­place them with a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, on Au­gust 13. 

Af­ter a lengthy vir­tu­al hear­ing on We3dnes­day, High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in re­served her de­ci­sion on an ap­pli­ca­tion brought by FI­FA to strike out or stay the law­suit brought by for­mer TTFA pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his ex­ec­u­tive team. 

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on FI­FA’s be­half, Se­nior Coun­sel Christo­pher Hamel-Smith re­peat­ed­ly stat­ed that the lo­cal High Court does not have ju­ris­dic­tion to en­ter­tain the law­suit as the leg­is­la­tion which es­tab­lished the TTFA and the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s con­sti­tu­tion states that such dis­putes should be re­solved through ar­bi­tra­tion. 

Hamel-Smith sug­gest­ed that the claus­es could have been re­moved from the con­sti­tu­tion if the TTFA de­sired but were not. 

Hamel-Smith al­so re­ject­ed Wal­lace and his col­leagues’ com­plaints about the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS), which like FI­FA is based in Switzer­land and is the ar­bi­tra­tion body iden­ti­fied by it (FI­FA) for such dis­putes. 

Re­fer­ring to claims that the CAS is bi­ased based on its fail­ure to re­quire FI­FA to cov­er half of the 40,000 Swiss francs (TT$276,000) in costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the ap­peal to it, Hamel-Smith not­ed that it (CAS) was mere­ly stat­ing FI­FA’s long-stand­ing pol­i­cy in all cas­es in­volv­ing it. 

Hamel-Smith stat­ed that while Wal­lace and his team could have ap­plied for le­gal aid to cov­er the full cost of the ap­peal, as re­quired un­der the Swiss-court’s rules, they did not. 

“You may dis­agree with the de­ci­sion but that is not grounds for bias,” Hamel-Smith said, as he not­ed that court of­fi­cials who com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the par­ties would not be the ar­bi­tra­tors in the ap­peal. 

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, Dr Emir Crowne, who is lead­ing the for­mer TTFA board mem­bers’ le­gal team, called on Gob­in to look past the claus­es which ap­pear to re­quire ar­bi­tra­tion as op­posed to lo­cal lit­i­ga­tion. 

Stat­ing that such re­quire­ments are in­op­er­a­ble and un­con­scionable, Crowne claimed that FI­FA forced their in­clu­sion at the ex­pense of the as­so­ci­a­tion and its mem­bers. 

“The crux of the mat­ter is when FI­FA says so, ap­par­ent­ly the world must bend to its will,” Crowne said. 

In terms of pro­ceed­ings be­fore the CAS, Crowne not­ed that his clients opt­ed to with­draw their pro­ceed­ings due to the gross in­equity in bar­gain­ing pow­er com­pared to FI­FA. 

Stat­ing that the CAS is a pri­vate ar­bi­tra­tion com­pa­ny, Crowne said his client was un­com­fort­able with its readi­ness to ac­cept FI­FA’s po­si­tion on pay­ing costs. 

“The fa­mil­iar­i­ty be­tween the par­ties shown gives us a gen­er­al cause of con­cern,” Crowne said. 

He al­so point­ed out that Switzer­land was an in­ap­pro­pri­ate fo­rum to re­solve such a le­gal dis­pute con­sid­er­ing the case sole in­volves T&T. 

Crowne al­so ques­tioned FI­FA’s claim that it may with­hold fund­ing for lo­cal foot­ball if Gob­in de­cides to re­ject its ap­pli­ca­tion and hear the case. 

“That can­not be a prop­er ar­gu­ment to a court. That can­not be cor­rect,” Crowne said. 

Through the lo­cal law­suit, Wal­lace and his three vice pres­i­dents — Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillips, and Su­san Joseph-War­rick are seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion that the de­ci­sion to re­move them in March and re­place them with a com­mit­tee head­ed by busi­ness­man Robert Hadad, was null, void, and of no le­gal or bind­ing ef­fect. 

They are al­so seek­ing a per­ma­nent in­junc­tion bar­ring FI­FA from med­dling in the TTFA’s af­fair by al­leged­ly seek­ing to cir­cum­vent the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process by re­mov­ing the du­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers. 

In the event that Gob­in re­jects FI­FA’s ap­pli­ca­tion, the case be­fore her will con­tin­ue. If the ap­pli­ca­tion is up­held, Wal­lace and his col­leagues will have to ei­ther abide by FI­FA’s de­ci­sion or at­tempt to re­vive their ap­peal be­fore the CAS. 

Wal­lace and his col­leagues are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Dr Emir Crowne, Matthew Gayle, Crys­tal Paul, and Ja­son Jones, while Jonathan Walk­er and Cherie Gopie ap­peared along­side Hamel-Smith for FI­FA.