An ar­bi­tra­tor will be ap­point­ed to help re­solve a dis­pute be­tween the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (AATT) and Jusam­co Pavers Lim­it­ed over is­sues with repaving work done in 2011 on the run­way of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

In a lengthy judge­ment at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, High Court Judge James Aboud up­held the AATT’s ap­pli­ca­tion to ap­point the ar­bi­tra­tor to re­solve the al­most decade-old dis­pute.  Al­though Aboud was asked to se­lect the ar­bi­tra­tor from a short-list of two re­gion­al and two British re­tired ju­rists sug­gest­ed by the AATT, he chose to al­low the par­ties to agree on their own choice. 

Aboud and the AATT’s le­gal team said they pre­ferred the for­eign ar­bi­tra­tors as they had ex­pe­ri­ence in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try and served on the Tech­nol­o­gy and Con­struc­tion Court in the Unit­ed King­dom. 

Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sell Mar­tineau sug­gest­ed re­tired Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) Judge Rol­ston Nel­son or Ja­maican le­gal lu­mi­nary Dr Lloyd Bar­nett as he stat­ed: “We do have peo­ple of great cal­i­bre right here in the Caribbean”. 

Af­ter the AATT’s at­tor­ney re­vealed that Nel­son had been re­tained to do work in an un­re­lat­ed case, Bar­nett was se­lect­ed as the pre­ferred can­di­date. In the event that Bar­nett is un­avail­able, the par­ties are ex­pect­ed to ap­proach Law As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Dou­glas Mendes, SC. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Aboud agreed to stay his de­ci­sion to give Jusam­co an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ap­peal. 

Ac­cord­ing to ev­i­dence in the case, the par­ties en­tered in­to a $165 mil­lion agree­ment for the project in Feb­ru­ary 2011. Sev­er­al months af­ter the site was hand­ed over to the AATT, its en­gi­neer al­leged­ly point­ed out that there were is­sues with bi­tu­men de­posits on sites in the run­way. 

While Jusam­co de­nied any wrong­do­ing, it al­leged­ly vol­un­teered to do re­me­di­al works on the iden­ti­fied sites due to its long and healthy busi­ness re­la­tion­ship with the AATT. 

In 2015, is­sues with the run­away al­leged­ly wors­ened and AATT ap­point­ed a new en­gi­neer who claimed Jusam­co was re­spon­si­ble for the de­fec­tive work. Jusam­co’s per­for­mance bond was with­held and AATT sug­gest­ed ar­bi­tra­tion. The re­me­di­al work was even­tu­al­ly done by a third par­ty. 

In his judge­ment, Aboud re­ject­ed Jusam­co’s al­le­ga­tion that the law­suit fell out­side the four-year lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od for civ­il claims as he not­ed that the AATT’s de­ci­sion was de­layed by Jusam­co’s of­fer to do the re­pairs. He al­so re­ject­ed Jusam­co’s claim that the de­layed ar­bi­tra­tion would be prej­u­di­cial as it could no longer take ac­tion against sub­con­trac­tors who may have been re­spon­si­ble for the faulty work. 

Aboud said Jusam­co should have con­sid­ered tak­ing such ac­tion while it was vol­un­tar­i­ly re­pair­ing the is­sues.