The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) has been or­dered to pay $1 mil­lion by a High Court judge to Prometheus En­gi­neer­ing and Con­sul­tants Ltd for breach of agree­ment.

Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams al­so or­dered that TSTT pay in­ter­est from the date of the le­gal ac­tion, Oc­to­ber 2018, to the date of the judg­ment—at the rate of re­turn on short-term in­vest­ments at 2.5 per cent, as well as costs.

Af­ter suc­cess­ful­ly sub­mit­ting a Re­quest for Pro­pos­al (RFP) to TSTT, the com­pa­ny was en­gaged for the pro­vi­sion of a Field Sales Agent for the pe­ri­od  De­cem­ber 1, 2016 to No­vem­ber 30, 2019.

The agree­ment en­tailed sell­ing and pro­vid­ing af­ter-sales sup­port ser­vices for TSTT’s Blink prod­uct and ser­vices through­out T&T.

The com­pa­ny stat­ed that TSTT pro­vid­ed them with stock dur­ing the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 2017 to Sep­tem­ber 2018, but no prod­ucts af­ter Sep­tem­ber/Oc­to­ber 2018 and nei­ther did they per­form any af­ter sales ser­vices. While dis­cus­sions were held with TSTT about pro­vid­ing ser­vices not in­clud­ed in the RFP, the com­pa­ny stat­ed that no con­sen­sus was reached. The com­pa­ny served TSTT with a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter in Au­gust 2019.

In their de­fence, TSTT stat­ed that the com­pa­ny had mo­bilised for the full three-year pe­ri­od at their own risk and at their sole dis­cre­tion and re­lied on a clause deal­ing with the ter­mi­na­tion of the agree­ment.

TSTT fur­ther ar­gued that the agree­ment gave them the sole dis­cre­tion to sup­ply prod­ucts to the com­pa­ny and did not bind them to any fixed or def­i­nite quo­ta, and it was at lib­er­ty not to pro­vide any prod­ucts.

TSTT ceased sales of fi­bre ser­vices in Sep­tem­ber 2018 due to the ac­qui­si­tion of Am­plia Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Lim­it­ed and the trans­fer of fi­bre ser­vices to Am­plia.

TSTT said it had al­so stopped the sale of WT­TX Ser­vices due to con­ges­tion is­sues.  TSTT claimed to have aid­ed the com­pa­ny to fo­cus on mo­bile and se­cu­ri­ty prod­ucts, in­clud­ing the mi­gra­tion to 4G and oth­er pro­grammes. It added that had it been li­able for breach of the agree­ment, the par­ties con­tract­ed to lim­it li­a­bil­i­ty to $1 mil­lion.

Af­ter con­sid­er­ing the ev­i­dence, the judge found that on a bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties TSTT breached the agree­ment.

“The de­fen­dant did not pro­vide prod­ucts for sale, that the agree­ment was not ter­mi­nat­ed un­der the pro­vi­sions of the agree­ment, that the de­fen­dant was giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to rec­ti­fy the breach but did not rec­ti­fy it and that there is a valid lim­i­ta­tion clause cap­ping the de­fen­dant’s li­a­bil­i­ty to $1 mil­lion,” said the judge in her writ­ten rul­ing.

The judge re­ject­ed the com­pa­ny’s re­quest for dam­ages for loss of rep­u­ta­tion, as she found the ev­i­dence on this mat­ter to be spec­u­la­tive.

The com­pa­ny was al­so un­suc­cess­ful in its plead­ings for spe­cial dam­ages per month for 15 months av­er­ag­ing  $3,349,290. 

At­tor­ney Lester Char­ri­ah, in­struct­ed by Kent Sam­lal, rep­re­sent­ed Prometheus En­gi­neer­ing and Con­sul­tants Ltd, while Sashi In­dars­ingh rep­re­sent­ed TSTT.