DEREK ACHONG

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing gym­nast The­ma Williams are seek­ing to have have the T&T Gym­nas­tics Fed­er­a­tion's de­fence to her mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar law­suit against it, struck out. Se­nior Coun­sel Marin Daly sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to file an ap­pli­ca­tion dur­ing a case man­age­ment hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad in the Port-of-Spain High Court on Tues­day.

Daly com­plained that the fed­er­a­tion dis­obeyed Seep­er­sad's or­der in re­la­tion to dis­clos­ing doc­u­ments per­ti­nent to Williams' law­suit.

The doc­u­ments re­late to com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the fed­er­a­tion and fel­low gym­nast Maris­sa Dick, who Williams is claim­ing was un­fair­ly picked ahead of her to rep­re­sent this coun­try at the 2016 Sum­mer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Daly said he wrote to the fed­er­a­tion's lawyers last week to out­line the breach­es and was yet to re­ceive a re­sponse.

Seep­er­sad in­di­cat­ed that the fed­er­a­tion had been giv­en a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­sponse and was in­formed by the fed­er­a­tion's lawyers

that the dis­clo­sure would be forth­com­ing.

If the ap­pli­ca­tion is filed and is suc­cess­ful, it may mean that the fed­er­a­tion would have a de­fault judge­ment levied against it.

Seep­er­sad was ex­pect­ed to set a tri­al date for the case dur­ing the hear­ing, how­ev­er, he post­poned the is­sue due to the de­lay in

dis­clo­sure. The case has been ad­journed to March 6.

The con­tro­ver­sial dis­pute be­tween the ath­lete and the fed­er­a­tion be­gan af­ter Williams was re­placed by Dick to rep­re­sent this coun­try at the Olympic Test Event event in April 2016. Her ini­tial se­lec­tion was based on her per­for­mance at the World Artis­tic Gym­nas­tics Cham­pi­onship in Glas­gow, Scot­land on Oc­to­ber 23, 2015, where she placed high­er than Dick.

Williams claimed that her coach John Ged­dert was in­formed by the fed­er­a­tion that she was with­drawn be­cause she was in­jured, a claim which she de­nies. Al­ter­nate ath­lete Dick was se­lect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the event in­stead and even­tu­al­ly qual­i­fied be­com­ing the first per­son to rep­re­sent T&T in gym­nas­tics at the Olympics.

In her claim for over $10 mil­lion in dam­ages, Williams is claim­ing com­pen­sa­tion for her “loss of op­por­tu­ni­ty” and dam­age to her per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion al­leged­ly caused by the “harsh and op­pres­sive” ac­tions of the fed­er­a­tion’s ex­ec­u­tive.

Her at­tor­neys are con­tend­ing that by fail­ing to be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to qual­i­fy for the Olympics, she suf­fered a huge loss of

op­por­tu­ni­ty of en­dorse­ments, mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­ing en­gage­ments and re­peat­ed busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties as well as a full schol­ar­ship to the Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, which she forewent in her bid to rep­re­sent T&T at event.

Williams is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Kei­th Scot­land, while Justin Junkere is rep­re­sent­ing the fed­er­a­tion.

Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, and Ron­nie Bisses­sar are rep­re­sent­ing the fed­er­a­tion's four ex­ec­u­tives.