Derek Achong

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A Ba­hamas-based sub­sidiary of CL Fi­nan­cial, seek­ing to re­cov­er over US$122 mil­lion in dam­ages from the es­tate of for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Lawrence Duprey over a failed land de­vel­op­ment in Flori­da, has lost its bid for ex­clu­sive ac­cess to le­gal costs that the es­tate was award­ed for a dis­con­tin­ued law­suit against Duprey and oth­er for­mer CLF ex­ec­u­tives over their al­leged roles in the con­glom­er­ate's col­lapse.

In a re­cent judg­ment, High Court Judge Vigel Paul ruled that Cher­sons, which ini­tial­ly rep­re­sent­ed Duprey in the now-dis­con­tin­ued pro­ceed­ings, was en­ti­tled to re­ceive its fees from the le­gal costs to be paid by the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) and CLF sub­sidiary Cli­co, with British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd (Baico) re­ceiv­ing what re­mains.

The sig­nif­i­cant dam­ages sought by Baico re­lat­ed to le­gal pro­ceed­ings in the Unit­ed States (US) over Duprey's breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ty in the com­pa­ny's in­vest­ment in the Green Is­land re­al es­tate de­vel­op­ment in Osce­o­la Coun­ty, Flori­da.

Baico in­vest­ed US$295 mil­lion in the project which re­sult­ed in over US$100 mil­lion in loss­es.

The loss­es forced the com­pa­ny in­to in­sol­ven­cy and led to sub­se­quent multi­na­tion­al in­sol­ven­cy pro­ceed­ings.

Baico first filed its US law­suit against Duprey and its oth­er ex­ec­u­tives in Sep­tem­ber 2009.

While the ex­ec­u­tives came to out-of-court set­tle­ments with the com­pa­ny, Duprey, a for­mer di­rec­tor, and for­mer chair­man Bri­an Branker con­tin­ued to chal­lenge the claim.

Duprey, Branker and their at­tor­neys were ac­tive in the case ini­tial­ly as they op­posed sev­er­al as­pects of Baico's claim.

Af­ter Duprey and his le­gal team were ab­sent from the pro­ceed­ings pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly be­tween 2013 and 2015, the com­pa­ny ob­tained a de­fault judge­ment against the duo.

Duprey then chal­lenged the de­fault judge­ment as he claimed that his at­tor­ney had with­drawn from the case and he was not aware of its sta­tus but failed to over­turn it.

In 2018, Baico, through its at­tor­neys Bryan Mc­Cutcheon, An­dre Rud­der, and Can­dace Lay­ers, of JD Sel­l­i­er and Com­pa­ny, reg­is­tered the judg­ment debt lo­cal­ly so that it could be­gin the process of seek­ing to re­coup the debt from Duprey's as­sets.

In 2011, CBTT and Cli­co filed its case seek­ing to hold Duprey, for­mer CLF ex­ec­u­tive An­dre Mon­teil, their pri­vate com­pa­nies and for­mer CLF cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Gi­ta Sakal li­able for de­ci­sions which al­leged­ly led to the col­lapse of the com­pa­ny and a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar gov­ern­ment bailout and takeover in 2009.

They were ac­cused of mis­man­ag­ing the com­pa­ny by mis­ap­ply­ing and mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing the com­pa­ny's in­come and as­sets to the detri­ment of pol­i­cy­hold­ers and in­vestors.

The case sought dam­ages and resti­tu­tion for the loss­es suf­fered by the com­pa­ny dur­ing the group's tenure. Duprey passed away in 2024. The case on­ly went to tri­al in Jan­u­ary, this year, but was stopped while the pro­ceed­ings were on­go­ing.

The case was even­tu­al­ly with­drawn af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, an­nounced plans to end civ­il lit­i­ga­tion re­lat­ed to the con­glom­er­ate and its sub­sidiaries.

Baico then ap­plied for ac­cess to the rea­son­able costs award­ed to Duprey's es­tate for the failed case to par­tial­ly sat­is­fy its debt. Cher­sons in­ter­vened as it claimed that it had an eq­ui­table lien on all or part of the funds.

In de­ter­min­ing which par­ty was en­ti­tled to the funds, Jus­tice Paul not­ed that the ex­act fig­ure award­ed was on­ly re­vealed to him and not the lit­i­gants based on a re­quest from CBTT and Cli­co.

He up­held Cher­sons' claim as he ruled that the funds were not the ben­e­fi­cial prop­er­ty of Duprey's es­tate and Baico could on­ly ac­cess what re­mains.

While he ac­knowl­edged the plight of over 3,500 Baico pol­i­cy­hold­ers seek­ing to re­coup their in­vest­ments through the com­pa­ny by re­cov­er­ing the debt from Duprey's es­tate, he not­ed that he could not ig­nore the firm's valid claim.

"Eq­ui­ty must, how­ev­er, be ad­min­is­tered ac­cord­ing to prin­ci­ple, not ac­cord­ing to the rel­a­tive sym­pa­thies of the par­ties," Jus­tice Paul said.

"To de­ny the lien on the ba­sis that oth­er cred­i­tors de­serve the mon­ey more would be to un­der­mine the very prin­ci­ple of ac­cess to jus­tice that the lien ex­ists to vin­di­cate," he added.

He stat­ed that the law had to af­ford pro­tec­tion to lawyers who act on cred­it for "im­pe­cu­nious" clients.

"To erode that as­sur­ance would be to make ac­cess to jus­tice hard­er, not eas­i­er, for the very peo­ple whom the doc­trine is de­signed to as­sist," Jus­tice Paul said.

Cher­sons was rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sell Hug­gins, Cherisse Hug­gins, and Rynelle Ruben. CBTT and Cli­co were rep­re­sent­ed by Ian Ben­jamin, SC, and Ele­na Arau­jo.