A San Juan fam­i­ly has won its le­gal bat­tle against the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion’s de­ci­sion to de­mol­ish the third storey of their home.

Jus­tice Vasheist Kokaram ruled that de­ci­sion of the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion was un­law­ful and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al and quashed the de­mo­li­tion and show cause no­tices is­sued to the Gee­lal fam­i­ly.

Broth­ers Prim­nath and Rup­nar­ine Gee­lal had in­her­it­ed two ad­join­ing but sep­a­rate hous­es on the cor­ner of Fazal Av­enue and El So­cor­ro Street from their fa­ther.

He built them in the 1970s.

Prim­nath Gee­lal lives in the three-storey build­ing while Rup­nar­ine lives in the oth­er house. The fam­i­ly rent­ed out the down­stairs of their homes to busi­ness­es.

The cor­po­ra­tion al­leged that the first no­tice was is­sued to Prim­nath Gee­lal in 2001 ac­cus­ing him that cer­tain con­struc­tion works were done to the house with­out Town and Coun­try Plan­ning ap­proval.

The main con­cern then was the con­struc­tion of the third floor. How­ev­er, Gee­lal claimed he re­ceived the first no­tice in 2007.

He then de­cid­ed to ap­ply for per­mis­sion but he was ad­vised by Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion that if the build­ing was con­struct­ed more than four years pri­or per­mis­sion was not re­quired.

Be­tween 2001 to 2007, the cor­po­ra­tion is­sued sev­er­al de­mol­ish and show cause no­tices to Gee­lal. He ad­mit­ted that in 2011 he did re­pairs to the roof of the third-storey of the build­ing and in 2014 he up­grad­ed the in­te­ri­or of the up­per lev­el but those works were to en­hance its “curb ap­peal” and did not re­quire any ap­provals un­der the plan­ning reg­u­la­tions.

Sev­er­al meet­ings be­tween Gee­lal and the cor­po­ra­tion con­clud­ed with the cor­po­ra­tion’s de­ci­sion in De­cem­ber 2017 to de­mol­ish the “of­fend­ing works.” How­ev­er, the court on De­cem­ber 20, 2017, grant­ed an or­der re­strain­ing the cor­po­ra­tion from tak­ing en­force­ment ac­tion pend­ing the hear­ing of the law­suit.

The judge not­ed that un­reg­u­lat­ed and spo­radic set­tle­ments were a by-prod­uct of the coun­try’s colo­nial past. While en­force­ment of build­ing vi­o­la­tions is a press­ing and ur­gent mat­ter for re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, the judge said, “in this case, the cor­po­ra­tion must act in the con­text of the his­to­ry of the Gee­lals, their homes and busi­ness­es, hu­mane­ly or pro­por­tion­ate­ly and fun­da­men­tal­ly fair­ly.”

“In mat­ters such as these, the court must even­ly bal­ance the rights and in­ter­ests of the State in en­forc­ing un­doubt­ed­ly salu­tary sound prin­ci­ples of plan­ning reg­u­la­tions and on the oth­er end the im­por­tant pro­pri­etary in­ter­ests of cit­i­zens which are detri­men­tal­ly im­pact­ed by such en­force­ment ac­tion.”

How­ev­er, the judge said en­force­ment ac­tion must be adopt­ed hu­mane­ly, “that is rea­son­ably and pro­por­tion­ate­ly.”

Koko­ram found the no­tices were pro­ce­du­ral­ly ir­reg­u­lar, un­rea­son­able and a breach of the prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice.

The judge said his rul­ing was not an es­cape route for peo­ple who would flout the plan­ning laws. The Gee­lals were rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj SC, Kings­ley Wales­by, Vi­jaya Ma­haraj and Odylyan Pierre while the cor­po­ra­tion was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys John Je­re­mie SC, Ker­wyn Gar­cia and Raisa Cae­sar.