Derek Achong

FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no has been giv­en the green light to re­take con­trol of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA).

De­liv­er­ing a judge­ment dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and Ap­pel­late Judge Nolan Bereaux ruled that the law­suit brought by em­bat­tled for­mer pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his Unit­ed TTFA team had con­tra­vened the TTFA’s con­sti­tu­tion.

The de­ci­sion means that FI­FA is free to rein­tro­duce the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee which they re­placed Wal­lace’s team with in March.

With such a move, FI­FA may al­so choose to lift the TTFA’s in­def­i­nite sus­pen­sion, which it ap­plied af­ter Wal­lace and his team failed to with­draw the law­suit by its ex­tend­ed ul­ti­ma­tum in Sep­tem­ber.

FI­FA had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that the lift­ing of the sus­pen­sion was con­tin­gent on the with­draw­al of the law­suit and mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the TTFA’s leg­is­la­tion and con­sti­tu­tion to pre­vent sim­i­lar le­gal ac­tion in the fu­ture. How­ev­er, based on the Ap­peal Court’s find­ings the lat­ter may now be un­nec­es­sary.

Wal­lace and his team may still have a life­line if they de­sire to pur­sue the case to its fullest, as they can still ap­peal the Court of Ap­peal’s rul­ing to the Privy Coun­cil. They are al­so free to pur­sue a case be­fore the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS).

How­ev­er, Wal­lace told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that he was throw­ing in the tow­el on the mat­ter.

“The court has ruled and we re­spect the rul­ing of our courts. As I said be­fore, this is fi­nal for me. This is fi­nal for me. I am not go­ing be­yond this,” Wal­lace said mo­ments af­ter the rul­ing.

“I said we would have stat­ed our case and as far as I am con­cerned, Jus­tice Gob­in’s de­ci­sion would al­ways be very im­por­tant to me, whether it was struck out based on the ap­pli­ca­tion of the law or ju­ris­dic­tion.

“It was heard. Fate al­lowed that and there was enough in that de­ci­sion for me. So now we move on.”

Jus­tice Bereaux, who wrote the sub­stan­tive judge­ment yes­ter­day, not­ed that the TTFA con­sti­tu­tion pre­scribes that all dis­putes be­tween it­self and FI­FA should be dealt with by CAS.

“The fact that such a pro­vi­sion is en­shrined in the TTFA’s con­sti­tu­tion means that the TTFA and its ex­ec­u­tive are bound to com­ply. The re­sult is that the fil­ing of these pro­ceed­ings was a breach of the TTFA’s con­sti­tu­tion,” Bereaux said.

He al­so said that High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in, who heard the case de­spite FI­FA’s ju­ris­dic­tion­al protest and found in Wal­lace’s team’s favour, was wrong to rule that FI­FA’s statutes, which deal with the ap­point­ment of nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tees to mem­ber fed­er­a­tions, were in­con­sis­tent with the Act of Par­lia­ment which in­cor­po­rat­ed the TTFA. Bereaux said the leg­is­la­tion gave the TTFA the pow­er to adopt FI­FA’s laws and poli­cies in its con­sti­tu­tion.

“Hav­ing made its choice and hav­ing bound it­self by its own con­sti­tu­tion to com­ply, it can­not now act out­side of its pro­vi­sions,” Bereaux said, as he ruled that the CAS was the more ap­pro­pri­ate fo­rum as it is com­prised of sport­ing ex­perts.

Bereaux al­so stat­ed that Gob­in should have stayed the case as re­quest­ed by FI­FA and re­ferred it to ar­bi­tra­tion.

While Archie mere­ly gave his nod to Bereaux’s writ­ten judge­ment, he de­cid­ed to weigh in on Gob­in’s han­dling of the case.

“It was nei­ther pru­dent case man­age­ment nor an eco­nom­i­cal de­ploy­ment of ju­di­cial time and re­sources to at­tempt to fi­nal­ly de­ter­mine the sub­stan­tive is­sues and to de­liv­er a judge­ment less than a week be­fore the sched­uled hear­ing of the in­ter­locu­to­ry ap­peal...Zeal is com­mend­able but it must not ob­scure the need for cau­tion,” Archie said.

In the judge­ment, the Ap­peal Court al­so ruled that the lit­i­ga­tion con­tra­vened the Ju­di­cia­ry’s Civ­il Pro­ceed­ings Rules, as it was served on FI­FA via email when Swiss law does not per­mit such a method for ser­vice of a law­suit.

De­spite the rul­ing, Bereaux said Wal­lace did have the au­thor­i­ty of the bring the case as all that was re­quired was the ap­proval of the board.

In ad­di­tion to de­clar­ing Gob­in’s judge­ment null and void, the Ap­peal Court al­so or­dered Wal­lace and his team to pay FI­FA’s le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the law­suit.

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

ABOUT THE CASE

William Wal­lace and vice-pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillips and Su­san Joseph-War­rick pur­sued le­gal ac­tion af­ter they were re­moved in March and re­placed with a com­mit­tee com­pris­ing of busi­ness­man Robert Hadad, at­tor­ney Judy Daniels and re­tired banker Nigel Ro­mano.

Wal­lace’s team ini­tial­ly brought pro­ceed­ings against FI­FA in the CAS but were forced to with­draw as they could not pay the 40,000 Swiss francs (TT$276,000) in as­so­ci­at­ed costs. Their po­si­tion was part­ly due to FI­FA’s pol­i­cy to not pay its share of fees and CAS’s rules which re­quire the oth­er par­ty to pay the full costs when the oth­er fails in its oblig­a­tions.

Af­ter the case was filed, FI­FA ap­plied for it to be struck out as it claimed the TTFA, by virtue of its mem­ber­ship with FI­FA, agreed to for­go all le­gal ac­tion in lo­cal courts in favour of pro­ceed­ings be­fore the CAS.

The ap­pli­ca­tion was ini­tial­ly blanked by Gob­in, who ruled the lo­cal courts were the ap­pro­pri­ate fo­rum to re­solve the dis­pute.

With the ap­peal against her rul­ing still pend­ing, Gob­in set the date for the tri­al and gave FI­FA an ex­ten­sion to file its de­fence. FI­FA failed to meet the dead­line, as it main­tained the po­si­tion that it did not ac­cept the ju­ris­dic­tion of the lo­cal court.

Wal­lace’s team al­so ob­tained an in­junc­tion against the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee af­ter it at­tempt­ed to fa­cil­i­tate an ex­tra­or­di­nary meet­ing among mem­bers to vote to with­draw the case. The in­junc­tion was not op­posed by FI­FA and was grant­ed.

Wal­lace’s team at­tempt­ed to with­draw the case on FI­FA’s ex­tend­ed ul­ti­ma­tum of Sep­tem­ber 23 but filed the ap­pli­ca­tion to with­draw past the dead­line.

Af­ter FI­FA’s sus­pen­sion the fol­low­ing day, Wal­lace’s team filed an­oth­er ap­pli­ca­tion with­draw­ing the with­draw­al ap­pli­ca­tion, in which he ad­mit­ted he was grudg­ing­ly dis­con­tin­u­ing the case based on a ma­jor­i­ty vote dur­ing an emer­gency meet­ing be­tween his team and stake­hold­ers.

The le­gal ma­noeu­vre co­in­cid­ed with an an­nounce­ment from sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent Joseph-War­rick that she was re­sign­ing from her post.

The Unit­ed TTFA al­so ap­proached the CAS for a tem­po­rary stay of this coun­try’s sus­pen­sion to al­low its par­tic­i­pa­tion in Con­ca­caf’s 2021 Gold Cup draw on Sep­tem­ber 28. The hear­ing of the in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion was de­ferred af­ter Con­ca­caf agreed to con­di­tion­al­ly keep T&T’s place in the draw.

If the sus­pen­sion is not lift­ed by ei­ther FI­FA or CAS by 5 pm on De­cem­ber 18, T&T will be re­placed by An­tigua and Bar­bu­da as the next high­est-ranked team based on per­for­mances dur­ing the 2019 Con­ca­caf Na­tions League.

In her judge­ment last week, Gob­in ruled that FI­FA’s statutes which pre­scribe the ap­point­ment of com­mit­tees to mem­ber fed­er­a­tion was too broad to be con­sid­ered law­ful. She al­so said the ex­ec­u­tive was not giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to FI­FA’s de­ci­sion be­fore they were re­placed.