Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The coun­try’s high­est court has ruled that the tim­ing of reg­is­tra­tion of com­pet­ing in­ter­ests in prop­er­ty de­ter­mines which claim takes prece­dence.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment yes­ter­day, five Law Lords of the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil de­liv­ered a prece­dent-set­ting judg­ment over the con­tentious le­gal is­sue, which would help re­solve fu­ture lit­i­ga­tion over prop­er­ty dis­putes.

The ap­peal re­lates to a law­suit brought in 2015 by Jim and An­na Marie Grant against Ler­rie Bovell, from whom they pur­chased a prop­er­ty lo­cat­ed at St Lu­cien Road in Diego Mar­tin.

Af­ter pay­ing the $800,000 pur­chase price, the cou­ple learned of a deed of as­sent re­lat­ed to the prop­er­ty, dat­ed April 15, 2014, and reg­is­tered days lat­er.

The deed pur­port­ed that the prop­er­ty was owned by Choy Min Sun, who left it for his rel­a­tives, Glen­da Jack­man, Choy Chan Sin and David Steele up­on his death in 2013.

The Grants filed a case against Bovell seek­ing to com­pel him to re­turn the mon­ey they paid for the prop­er­ty, plus the $182,209.68 they spent on ren­o­vat­ing it be­fore the dis­pute arose.

Bovell counter-sued Jack­man, Chan Sin, Steele and Al­loy Sun, who was the ex­ecu­tor, claim­ing that he had a prop­er ti­tle to the prop­er­ty but virtue of a deed of con­veyance that was ex­e­cut­ed be­tween him and Sun in 1979, but was held in es­crow un­til 2007 be­fore be­ing reg­is­tered, af­ter theirs, in De­cem­ber 2014.

The case dealt with the ef­fect of Sec­tion 16 (1) of the Reg­is­tra­tion of Deeds Act, which gives pri­or­i­ty to com­pet­ing deeds based on the time of reg­is­tra­tion.

In Jan­u­ary 2019, High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran up­held the Grants’ case and dis­missed Bovell’s counter-claim against the group of ben­e­fi­cia­ries based on the ear­li­er fil­ing of their deed.

The Court of Ap­peal re­versed the judge’s de­ci­sion as it found that ear­li­er reg­is­tra­tion could not de­feat a le­git­i­mate pur­chas­er’s pri­or in­ter­est.

In de­ter­min­ing the fi­nal ap­peal, Lord Michael Brig­gs, who wrote the Board’s de­ci­sion, agreed with sub­mis­sions raised by the group’s lawyer, Christophe Ro­driguez.

Lord Brig­gs found that the leg­is­la­tion was clear and es­tab­lished a hi­er­ar­chy based on the time of fil­ing and not strength of claim to the prop­er­ty.

“The lan­guage of Sec­tion 16(1) sim­ply does not ac­com­mo­date any dis­tinc­tion be­tween pur­chasers and vol­un­teers,” he said.

He al­so re­ject­ed claims that Sun could not trans­fer the prop­er­ty to his ben­e­fi­cia­ries up­on his death, as he no longer legal­ly owned it.

“The re­sult would be that pri­or­i­ty would al­ways de­pend up­on the time of de­liv­ery and not the time of reg­is­tra­tion,” Lord Brig­gs said, as he not­ed that a con­trary in­ter­pre­ta­tion would un­der­mine the statu­to­ry scheme es­tab­lished by Par­lia­ment.

De­spite the rul­ing, Lord Brig­gs sym­pa­thised with the Grants for the predica­ment they found them­selves in, by on­ly dis­cov­er­ing the com­pet­ing and strong claim af­ter they had al­ready ini­ti­at­ed the pur­chase.

Stat­ing that their ini­tial checks in the reg­istry should have in­formed them, Lord Brig­gs said: “There has been no find­ing as to why it was missed.”

“It is a fair in­fer­ence that, if their search had re­vealed the As­sent, they would not have com­plet­ed their pur­chase of the prop­er­ty,” he added.

He found that Bovell on­ly had him­self to blame for his tar­di­ness in hav­ing his deed reg­is­tered.

“As for Mr Bovell him­self, he was the vic­tim of his ex­tra­or­di­nary de­lay in reg­is­ter­ing the 1979 Con­veyance, even af­ter the con­di­tion for its es­crow ex­pired in 2007,” Lord Brig­gs said.

The group was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ki­maa­da Ot­t­ley. The Grants and Bovell were rep­re­sent­ed by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Ste­fan Ramkissoon, Cait­lyn Greene and Sarah Sinanan.