A Laven­tille-based gen­er­al con­tract­ing com­pa­ny will have to wait un­til next month to learn if it can con­tin­ue its law­suit over a move by the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)-led Gov­ern­ment to ter­mi­nate it and over 300 fel­low CEPEP con­trac­tors.

High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed was ex­pect­ed to con­sid­er an in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion, brought by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) on be­half of East­man En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed, dur­ing a hear­ing yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

The com­pa­ny was seek­ing an or­der stay­ing the ter­mi­na­tions and an­oth­er bar­ring the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme Com­pa­ny from hir­ing re­place­ment con­trac­tors whilst its sub­stan­tive case over the mass ter­mi­na­tion is de­ter­mined.

How­ev­er, the judge re­quest­ed fur­ther sub­mis­sions on a sep­a­rate ap­pli­ca­tion from CEPEP’s lawyers, led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, to strike out the case based on a lack of ju­ris­dic­tion to hear it.

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, CEPEP has con­tend­ed that the judge should not en­ter­tain the case as the con­tract be­tween the com­pa­nies con­tained an al­ter­na­tive dis­pute res­o­lu­tion clause, which re­quired them to en­gage in me­di­a­tion and ar­bi­tra­tion be­fore pur­su­ing lit­i­ga­tion in the event of a dis­pute.

“As a pre­con­di­tion to bring­ing this claim, the par­ties have agreed to first ex­er­cise and/or ex­haust these two al­ter­na­tive dis­pute res­o­lu­tion mech­a­nisms be­fore a vi­able and jus­ti­cia­ble claim could be brought in the High Court,” CEPEP’s lawyers said.

“It would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate and im­prop­er for the Court to al­low the Claimant to breach and/or by­pass the manda­to­ry al­ter­na­tive dis­pute res­o­lu­tion mech­a­nisms they agreed to and en­ter­tain this claim,” they added.

The par­ties were giv­en un­til the end of the month to file the sub­mis­sion, with Jus­tice Mo­hammed ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er her rul­ing on the pre­lim­i­nary point on Au­gust 8.

In the sub­stan­tive case, East­man is con­tend­ing that CEPEP act­ed un­law­ful­ly in ter­mi­nat­ing the con­tracts late last month, based on a di­rec­tive from the cur­rent Cab­i­net led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

It claims that CEPEP was re­quired to im­me­di­ate­ly pay it 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 al­leged that while it was promised that the pay­ment would be processed and dis­pensed when CEPEP no­ti­fied the com­pa­ny of the ter­mi­na­tion, the pay­ment should have been made to­geth­er with the ter­mi­na­tion let­ter.

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

In rais­ing the ju­ris­dic­tion point this week, CEPEP’s lawyer al­so claimed that the con­tracts, which were due to end in Sep­tem­ber next year, were re­newed for three years on the eve of the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion with­out Cab­i­net ap­proval.

It claimed that the com­pa­ny’s for­mer board was de­ceived in­to fa­cil­i­tat­ing the re­newals based on an al­leged fraud­u­lent mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

It al­so pro­vid­ed a state­ment from the Min­istry of Fi­nance, which in­di­cat­ed that Cab­i­net ap­proval was re­quired to com­mit the Gov­ern­ment to the sig­nif­i­cant ex­pen­di­ture for three years, which was es­ti­mat­ed to be over $ 1 bil­lion.

It filed an af­fi­davit from its chief ex­ec­u­tive, Kei­th Ed­dy, who al­leged that the State board’s for­mer chair­man, Joel Ed­wards, had told him that Cab­i­net ap­proval had been grant­ed be­fore the re­new­al process was ini­ti­at­ed.

Ed­wards filed an af­fi­davit in re­sponse, on be­half of East­man, and de­nied the al­le­ga­tion.

Ed­wards said, “In my dis­cus­sions with the CEO, we spoke about the is­sue of Cab­i­net ap­proval and we won­dered whether same was re­quired, but no de­ci­sion was made on that is­sue of ob­tain­ing Cab­i­net ap­proval.”

While he ad­mit­ted that a note over the ex­ten­sion, which was sub­se­quent­ly ap­proved by CEPEP’s board, stat­ed that such had been ap­proved by the Cab­i­net, he claimed that it (the note) was lat­er cor­rect­ed.

How­ev­er, he did not pro­vide the cor­rect­ed note.

CEPEP is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Kent Sam­lal, Jared Ja­groo, Aasha Ram­lal, and Natasha Bis­ram. East­man is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, Ka­reem Mar­celle, and St Clair O’Neil.