A fam­i­ly has se­cured a le­gal vic­to­ry in its bat­tle against an in­sur­ance com­pa­ny over the ear­ly ter­mi­na­tion of a lease agree­ment.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered last week, Ap­pel­late Judges Car­la Brown-An­toine and Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well up­held an ap­peal brought by Pu­nia Kan­hai and her chil­dren—Kee­sham, Rad­na, Nali­ni, Chan­dra, Nir­mala and An­i­tra—against Vi­sion­core In­sur­ance Trinidad Ltd.

The mat­ter arose from a lease for a por­tion of a prop­er­ty lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of SS Erin Road and Ram­rat­tan Ma­haraj Trace in Debe.

Ev­i­dence showed that Kan­hai held a life in­ter­est in the prop­er­ty, while her six chil­dren were equal ben­e­fi­cial own­ers.

In 2019, the com­pa­ny en­tered in­to a five-year lease through an agent en­gaged by An­i­tra on be­half of the fam­i­ly.

Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the fam­i­ly agreed to de­fer rental pay­ments at the com­pa­ny’s re­quest. How­ev­er, in March 2022, the com­pa­ny no­ti­fied the fam­i­ly of its in­ten­tion to va­cate the prop­er­ty the fol­low­ing month.

The fam­i­ly sub­se­quent­ly filed a law­suit seek­ing spe­cif­ic per­for­mance of the lease or $580,000 in com­pen­sa­tion, rep­re­sent­ing lost rental in­come due to the pre­ma­ture ter­mi­na­tion. They al­so sought pay­ment of an out­stand­ing elec­tric­i­ty bill from April 2022, as well as $241,450 for al­leged dam­age to the prop­er­ty.

In its de­fence, the com­pa­ny chal­lenged the au­thor­i­ty of An­i­tra and her agent to en­ter in­to the lease on be­half of the fam­i­ly.

It al­so con­tend­ed that it was en­ti­tled to ter­mi­nate the lease by giv­ing one month’s no­tice, which it said it had done.

The ap­peal was filed af­ter a High Court judge re­fused to strike out the com­pa­ny’s de­fence and grant de­fault judg­ment in favour of the fam­i­ly with­out a tri­al.

In up­hold­ing the ap­peal, Jus­tice Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well found that the judge had ap­plied the wrong le­gal test, con­sid­er­ing whether the de­fence was ar­guable rather than whether it had a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess at tri­al.

She re­ject­ed the com­pa­ny’s claim that the lessors need­ed to be specif­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fied un­der the agree­ment and ques­tioned why the is­sue was raised on­ly af­ter the com­pa­ny had oc­cu­pied the prop­er­ty for near­ly three years.

“It is ap­par­ent that this is a clas­sic case of a de­fault­ing ten­ant con­tro­vert­ing or deny­ing the land­lord’s ti­tle so as to avoid claims made by the land­lord af­ter ben­e­fit­ing from pos­ses­sion,” she stat­ed.

“Such a chal­lenge is dis­cour­aged in es­tab­lished ju­rispru­dence,” she added.

While the ap­pel­late pan­el grant­ed de­fault judg­ment in favour of the fam­i­ly, it did not award the full sum claimed. In­stead, the mat­ter was re­ferred to the High Court for an as­sess­ment of dam­ages.

The com­pa­ny was al­so or­dered to pay the fam­i­ly’s le­gal costs for the ap­peal.

The Kan­hais were rep­re­sent­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, along with at­tor­neys Shas­tine Moti­lal and Pad­ma­vati Per­sad Ma­haraj.

The com­pa­ny was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Javed Mo­hammed and Van­dana Kissoon.