The Court of Ap­peal is sched­uled to hear a mat­ter over the con­tentious lit­i­ga­tion chal­leng­ing a move by the Gov­ern­ment to ter­mi­nate over 300 Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme Com­pa­ny (CEPEP) con­trac­tors on Oc­to­ber 2.

The date for the hear­ing was an­nounced by the Court of Ap­peal in a no­tice is­sued last Fri­day.

The com­pa­ny was seek­ing an ur­gent hear­ing of the pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal dur­ing the ju­di­cia­ry’s on­go­ing an­nu­al va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, but its ap­pli­ca­tion was re­fused by Ap­pel­late Judge Nolan Bereaux last week.

In the ap­peal, Laven­tille-based gen­er­al con­tract­ing com­pa­ny East­man En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed claimed that High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed erred when she stayed its case and re­ferred an as­pect of it, deal­ing with the ex­ten­sion of the con­trac­tor’s days be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC.

It claimed that Jus­tice Mo­hammed was wrong to rule that it was re­quired to pur­sue me­di­a­tion and ar­bi­tra­tion be­fore lit­i­ga­tion, based on a clause in its con­tract.

It al­so claimed that she should have con­sid­ered its ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion, stay­ing the ter­mi­na­tions and block­ing the ap­point­ment of re­place­ment con­trac­tors.

It stat­ed that the judge al­so made pre­lim­i­nary find­ings in re­la­tion to whether Cab­i­net ap­proval was re­quired for the re­newals with­out all the ev­i­dence in re­la­tion to such be­ing be­fore her and test­ed through cross-ex­am­i­na­tion.

It al­so not­ed that the judge was wrong to re­fer the case to Gas­pard when he (Gas­pard) does not have any pow­er of in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

East­man filed the law­suit af­ter the con­tracts were ter­mi­nat­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)-led Gov­ern­ment in late June.

East­man con­tend­ed that CEPEP act­ed un­law­ful­ly, as it (CEPEP) was re­quired to im­me­di­ate­ly pay for one month’s ser­vice as it sought to ter­mi­nate, based on Clause 15 of the con­tract, with­out giv­ing no­tice.

The clause al­lows CEPEP to ter­mi­nate by giv­ing 30 days’ no­tice or mak­ing a pay­ment in lieu of no­tice if the com­pa­ny fails to meet its con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions or per­for­mance as­sess­ments con­duct­ed by CEPEP of­fi­cials.

It is al­so con­tend­ed that the clause is un­fair and in breach of the Un­fair Con­tract Terms Act 1985, as it gave CEPEP too wide a dis­cre­tion to ter­mi­nate.

Re­spond­ing to the law­suit, CEPEP raised the is­sue of the lack of Cab­i­net ap­proval for the ex­ten­sions.

It al­so filed an ap­pli­ca­tion for the case to be struck out on the ba­sis that the com­pa­ny had al­ter­na­tive dis­pute mech­a­nisms avail­able to it.

CEPEP put for­ward an af­fi­davit from CEPEP Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Kei­th Ed­dy, who claimed that for­mer chair­man Joel Ed­wards gave as­sur­ances to him and the com­pa­ny’s board that Cab­i­net had ap­proved the re­newals be­fore they ap­proved such.

Ed­wards pro­vid­ed an af­fi­davit in re­sponse, on East­man’s be­half, in which he claimed he nev­er gave such as­sur­ances and sought to cor­rect a board note over the re­newals that in­di­cat­ed that it was be­ing done with the bless­ing of the then-Cab­i­net.

He lat­er claimed that the ex­ten­sions were done based on a Cab­i­net minute from 2017, which he claimed gave the state com­pa­ny the au­ton­o­my to de­cide on such with­out Cab­i­net in­put.

Ed­dy then filed an­oth­er af­fi­davit chal­leng­ing Ed­wards’ claims, in­clud­ing a tran­script of What­sApp mes­sages be­tween them.

He fur­ther con­tend­ed that be­fore Ed­wards gave the al­leged as­sur­ance, he (Ed­dy) was per­son­al­ly pres­sured by for­mer rur­al de­vel­op­ment and lo­cal gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi in­to fa­cil­i­tat­ing the re­newals of the con­tracts.

CEPEP has al­so threat­ened Ed­wards with le­gal ac­tion over his role in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the re­newals.

CEPEP sug­gest­ed that, through the pro­posed law­suit, it would be seek­ing an or­der against him to in­dem­ni­fy it against any loss­es it may sus­tain in re­la­tion to the ex­tend­ed con­tracts and their sub­se­quent ter­mi­na­tions.

It has al­so called on the oth­er nine mem­bers of the board to clear the air on the au­thor­i­ty they were act­ing un­der when de­cid­ing on the ex­ten­sions. Thus far, on­ly for­mer board mem­ber Camille Ho­sein has re­spond­ed and has cor­rob­o­rat­ed Ed­dy’s claims.

Ed­dy has al­so threat­ened to sue Al-Rawi for defama­tion over state­ments he made in re­la­tion to his con­duct in the case.

CEPEP is rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Kent Sam­lal, Jared Ja­groo, and Asha Ram­lal of Free­dom Law Cham­bers. East­man is rep­re­sent­ed by Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, St Clair O’Neil, and Ka­reem Mar­celle.