The Privy Coun­cil has re­served its de­ci­sion on a fi­nal ap­peal in a law­suit brought by for­mer Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart over ad­verse find­ings made against him by the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Las Al­turas Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment in Mor­vant.

Five Law Lords said they need­ed time to con­sid­er their judg­ment in the case af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions from two lawyers for sur­viv­ing com­mis­sion­ers Dr My­ron Wing-Sang Chin and An­tho­ny Far­rell at the Unit­ed King­dom Supreme Court Build­ing in Lon­don, Eng­land, on Wednes­day.

The Board said that they did not re­quire the sub­mis­sions of Hart’s le­gal team and lawyers for the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, who were present at the hear­ing, in or­der to de­cide the case.

In the ap­peal, Wing-Sang Chin and Far­rell are con­tend­ing that the Court of Ap­peal erred when it re­versed the find­ings of a High Court Judge, who re­ject­ed Hart’s case.

The com­mis­sion of en­quiry led by Re­tired Jus­tice of Ap­peal Mustapha Ibrahim, who died in June 2017, was set up to in­ves­ti­gate the con­struc­tion of a set of mul­ti-storey apart­ment build­ings at La­dy Young Gar­dens, Mor­vant.

The Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ap­point­ed the com­mis­sion af­ter two of the units of the hous­ing project be­gan falling apart af­ter con­struc­tion and were ear­marked for de­mo­li­tion.

In the com­mis­sion’s re­port, pre­sent­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2016, it stat­ed that while there were no grounds for crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings to be brought against any­one, civ­il ac­tion could be tak­en against Hart, for­mer Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Noel Gar­cia, Ude­cott and the HDC for neg­li­gence in pur­chas­ing and con­struct­ing on the un­sta­ble land.

Hart and Gar­cia, who served as chair­man of Ude­cott un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion be­tween 2015 and ear­li­er this year, filed sim­i­lar law­suits against the com­mis­sion­ers as they claimed that they were not giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to ad­verse find­ings made against them be­fore the re­port was pub­lished.

Hart’s case was re­ject­ed by High Court Judge David Har­ris weeks be­fore Gar­cia’s was up­held by Jus­tice Kevin Ram­cha­ran.

In June 2023, Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed, Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar, and Maria Wil­son up­held Hart’s ap­peal.

They found that Jus­tice Har­ris was wrong to have ruled that Hart wrong­ly ex­pand­ed his case over the un­fair­ness of the de­ci­sion to claim that he had a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion that he would be al­lowed to re­spond be­fore pub­li­ca­tion based on as­sur­ances from the com­mis­sion­ers when they first sought his tes­ti­mo­ny be­fore them.

They al­so found that nat­ur­al jus­tice and pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness re­quired that Hart be con­sult­ed be­fore pub­li­ca­tion through the is­suance of a salmon let­ter.

They al­so ruled that he had a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion to be con­sult­ed a sec­ond time, al­though he re­fused to tes­ti­fy pre­vi­ous­ly be­cause he claimed that he did not have ac­cess to Ude­cott doc­u­ments to ad­dress con­cerns raised.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions yes­ter­day, King’s Coun­sel Richard Clay­ton claimed that the tri­al judge was cor­rect to have dis­missed the case over Hart’s bid to ex­tend its scope.

“The tri­al judge’s de­ci­sion was fair in the par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stances of the case and the Court of Ap­peal erred in in­ter­fer­ing with the judge’s con­clu­sion,” Clay­ton said.

“The onus is on the claimant to show that the de­ci­sion was un­law­ful, not for the de­fen­dant to prove that it act­ed law­ful­ly,” he added.

In his sub­mis­sions, Rowan Pen­ning­ton-Ben­ton, who ap­peared along­side Clay­ton for the com­mis­sion­ers, claimed that they were cor­rect to take the ac­tion with­out giv­ing him no­tice, as their find­ings were sim­i­lar to their terms of ref­er­ence, which were pre­sent­ed to Hart when his tes­ti­mo­ny was first sought.

“The dif­fer­ence is slight,” he said.

He al­so ques­tioned whether Hart would have par­tic­i­pat­ed with­out the re­quest­ed doc­u­ments even if he had been no­ti­fied.

“This per­son had been un­co­op­er­a­tive. He was pro­vid­ed with what was avail­able, but he want­ed more. He said with­out the doc­u­ments, I can­not as­sist,” Pen­ning­ton-Ben­ton said.

Hart was rep­re­sent­ed by Dr Lloyd Bar­nett, An­tho­ny Bul­lock, and Tecia Dun­can-Caines, while the AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Daniel Feetham, KC.