The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has been grant­ed an ex­ten­sion to file its de­fence to a law­suit over ap­prox­i­mate­ly $80 mil­lion in un­paid fees for the con­struc­tion of a road that was com­plet­ed al­most 16 years ago.

On Wednes­day, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad grant­ed the THA the ex­ten­sion, which was not op­posed by Siparia-based con­struc­tion com­pa­ny Raghu­nath Singh and Com­pa­ny Ltd, which brought the claim.

In grant­i­ng the ex­ten­sion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that the law­suit was filed and served be­tween No­vem­ber last year and Jan­u­ary, this year.

He stat­ed that if the de­fence was not filed by the new dead­line of June 30, the claim would be con­sid­ered un­de­fend­ed and the com­pa­ny would be en­ti­tled to ap­ply for a de­fault judg­ment against the THA.

In its court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the com­pa­ny claimed that in Au­gust 2002 it signed a con­tract with the THA for the con­struc­tion of the Char­lot­teville-L’Anse Four­mi Road in Her­mitage, To­ba­go.

The project, which was fund­ed by the Eu­ro­pean De­vel­op­ment Fund (EDF), was es­ti­mat­ed to cost $39,961,371.56 in­clud­ing val­ue added tax (VAT).

The project was de­layed by vari­a­tions in the orig­i­nal de­sign, in­clement weath­er, cost fluc­tu­a­tions, and ad­di­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval al­leged­ly re­quired by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty.

It claimed that af­ter rec­ti­fy­ing de­fects iden­ti­fied by the THA’s project man­ag­er and con­sul­tant en­gi­neers, the fi­nal cost for the project was $58,280,366.36.

The com­pa­ny was paid $31,266,900.05 and is now seek­ing the re­main­ing $27 mil­lion.

It re­ferred to cor­re­spon­dence sent by for­mer Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Joel Jack in Ju­ly 2020, in which he ad­vised that the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and the En­vi­ron­ment was in­ves­ti­gat­ing its claim.

It al­so claimed that it wrote to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert over the is­sue but re­ceived no re­sponse.

In ad­di­tion to the bal­ance on the con­tract, the com­pa­ny is seek­ing $53,464,548.62 in in­ter­est on the out­stand­ing sum and its le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the law­suit.

In its ap­pli­ca­tion for the ex­ten­sion to file its de­fence, the THA’s lawyer Do­minique Mar­tineau claimed that she and her col­leagues were de­layed in sourc­ing doc­u­ments rel­a­tive to the con­tract.

“This process has proven quite chal­leng­ing due to the pas­sage of time be­tween the ini­ti­a­tion of the claim in 2022 and how long ago the con­struc­tion works were per­formed and com­plet­ed in 2007,” Mar­tineau said in her af­fi­davit.

The com­pa­ny was rep­re­sent­ed by Pe­ter Tay­lor, while Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, and Avionne Thomas are al­so rep­re­sent­ing the THA.

The case is ex­pect­ed to come up for case man­age­ment be­fore Jus­tice Seep­er­sad af­ter the THA files a de­fence.

—Derek Achong