Derek Achong

A High Court Judge has crit­i­cised the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for con­stant­ly seek­ing ex­ten­sions to file de­fences to law­suits brought against the State.

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad de­liv­ered the cri­tique yes­ter­day, as State at­tor­neys sought his ap­proval for an ex­ten­sion of time to file the State’s de­fence to a $12 mil­lion law­suit brought by Achie­vor En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed over ser­vices it would have pro­vid­ed to the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM).

Seep­er­sad said he had gen­er­al con­cerns over the ex­ten­sion ap­pli­ca­tion, based on his ex­pe­ri­ence in many cas­es in­volv­ing the AG’s of­fice.

He said, “Over the last eight months to prob­a­bly a year, al­most all the mat­ters be­fore this court in­volv­ing the State have re­sult­ed in nu­mer­ous ap­pli­ca­tions for ex­ten­sions of time to file de­fences.”

He point­ed out that State at­tor­neys in those cas­es gave a “pletho­ra” of rea­sons for the sit­u­a­tion, in­clud­ing their large case-load and de­lays in re­ceiv­ing in­struc­tions from Gov­ern­ment min­istries and State agen­cies.

Seep­er­sad claimed that the lat­ter jus­ti­fi­ca­tion was un­ac­cept­able as such bod­ies were ex­pect­ed to be­gin to com­pile doc­u­ments and in­for­ma­tion to as­sist in prepar­ing de­fences up­on re­ceiv­ing pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters threat­en­ing po­ten­tial le­gal ac­tion.

“It seems as though pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters are be­ing gen­er­al­ly ig­nored,” he said.

Re­spond­ing to the state­ment, at­tor­ney Ter­rence Bharath, who was re­tained to lead a team of State at­tor­neys in the case, claimed that he sought to speed up the process be­ing con­duct­ed by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

“I don’t want to say it was ig­nored be­cause I don’t know...It is be­ing worked on as­sid­u­ous­ly,” Bharath said.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, Kelvin Ramkissoon, who led Achie­vor En­ter­pris­es’ le­gal team, point­ed out that the AG’s of­fice al­so de­layed for over a month in en­ter­ing its ap­pear­ance in the case af­ter it was filed in De­cem­ber, last year.

While Ramkissoon said he was not op­posed to the ex­ten­sion, he sug­gest­ed that the AG’s Of­fice should be giv­en un­til April 17 to com­ply as op­posed to the new May 1 dead­line that was ap­plied for.

“My client has been out of pock­et for quite some time,” he said.

Seep­er­sad even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed to grant the longer ex­ten­sion sought by Bharath and his team.

In its law­suit, the com­pa­ny is con­tend­ing that it is owed the mon­ey for ser­vices it pro­vid­ed to the ODPM be­tween 2011 and 2021. The ser­vices in­clud­ed the rental of fork­lifts, trucks and am­phibi­ous util­i­ty ve­hi­cles as well as ware­house man­age­ment.

The com­pa­ny claimed that it en­tered in­to dis­cus­sions with se­nior of­fi­cials from the ODPM and the min­istry over pay­ment of the fees and re­ceived ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500,000 to­wards the same.

In Jan­u­ary last year, the min­istry ter­mi­nat­ed the ware­house at­ten­dant ser­vices with the com­pa­ny.

Through the law­suit, the com­pa­ny is claim­ing the $12,161,162.72 it con­tends it is owed plus in­ter­est.

It is al­so seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion that the ODPM had been un­just­ly en­riched by ben­e­fit­ing from the ser­vices it did not pay for.

The com­pa­ny was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ak­shay Boodram and Ra­jiv Sumair, while Ji­nai Chong Sing, Raquel Le Blanc, Lau­ra Per­sad, and Mur­vani Ojah-Ma­haraj.