Gail Alexan­der

From 2017 to 2022 there were ten cas­es in which judg­ment was grant­ed against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in de­fault of fil­ing a de­fence, as well as two cas­es in which judg­ment was grant­ed in de­fault of an ap­pear­ance.

Dam­ages to claimants in nine of the ten cas­es was $955,269.37, while dam­ages to claimants in the two oth­er cas­es was $910,000.

This was stat­ed in a writ­ten re­ply by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour to an Op­po­si­tion ques­tion.

Ar­mour was asked to pro­vide the fol­low­ing in­for­ma­tion for each year dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2017 to 2022:

(i) The num­ber of cas­es in which judg­ment was grant­ed against the AG in de­fault of fil­ing a de­fence;

(ii) The num­ber of cas­es in which judg­ment was grant­ed against the AG in de­fault of an ap­pear­ance; and

(iii) The to­tal sum paid in dam­ages in cas­es where claimants ob­tained judg­ment in de­fault of the AG fil­ing a de­fence or ap­pear­ing.

The writ­ten re­ply stat­ed that based on re­spons­es from 22 at­tor­neys in the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment, the act­ing So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al ad­vised that:

(i) The num­ber of cas­es in which judg­ment was grant­ed against the AG in de­fault of fil­ing a de­fence for the pe­ri­od 2017 to 2022 amounts to ten.

(ii) The num­ber of cas­es in which judg­ment was grant­ed against the AG in de­fault of an ap­pear­ance for the pe­ri­od 2017 to 2022 was two.

(iii) The ap­prox­i­mate sum paid in dam­ages in nine of the cas­es where claimants ob­tained judg­ment in de­fault of the AG fil­ing a de­fence amounts to $955,269.37 and the ap­prox­i­mate sum paid in dam­ages in the two cas­es where claimants ob­tained judg­ment in de­fault of the AG fil­ing an ap­pear­ance amounts to $910,000.00.

The tenth mat­ter is sched­uled for as­sess­ment be­fore a Mas­ter to­day.

Al­so in the Sen­ate, Ar­mour replied to Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s ques­tion about the to­tal amount of le­gal fees paid to the at­tor­neys who ad­vised NID­CO to ter­mi­nate the con­tract with Brazil­ian con­struc­tion com­pa­ny Con­stru­to­ra OAS SA.

Ar­mour said his Min­istry did not re­tain the at­tor­neys on record for that mat­ter to rep­re­sent NID­CO’s in­ter­est.

“Con­se­quent­ly the Min­istry has no record of any in­voic­es be­ing sub­mit­ted by NID­CO’s at­tor­neys for this mat­ter. I can con­firm the Min­istry has not paid any le­gal fees to the at­tor­neys on record for this mat­ter,” he said.

Ar­mour said it’s a mat­ter of pub­lic record that based on the ad­vice of its at­tor­neys, NID­CO has to date re­cov­ered $922 mil­lion of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey in the OAS mat­ter and has been suc­cess­ful in court in main­tain­ing pos­ses­sion of those funds.

“Any le­gal fees paid to its at­tor­neys in re­spect of this mat­ter there­fore would be a small frac­tion of the amount re­cov­ered,” he said.

“In any event the fees paid to oth­er at­tor­neys who ad­vised NID­CO on var­i­ous mat­ters may ar­guably be­come the sub­ject of com­ment and/or rec­om­men­da­tions by the com­mis­sion­ers in the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry es­tab­lished to ex­am­ine and in­quire in­to all as­pects of the land ac­qui­si­tion process by NID­CO for con­struc­tion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin and as such it is in­ap­pro­pri­ate for me to in­quire af­ter and/or to com­ment on this sub­ject at this time.”