Af­ter months of bat­tling off the field and in the court­room, em­bat­tled T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his Unit­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive team will have to wait three more days to learn the fate of their con­tro­ver­sial law­suit against FI­FA.

High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in re­served her de­ci­sion in the case to Tues­day at 3 pm, af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions from lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Wal­lace and his team dur­ing a vir­tu­al tri­al, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Al­though FI­FA's lo­cal le­gal team was present, they did not chal­lenge or de­fend against the the ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers' sub­mis­sions as they main­tained that they had re­ceived in­struc­tions to not play a role be­cause of their client does not ac­cept the court's ju­ris­dic­tion to hear the case.

How­ev­er, Se­nior Coun­sel Christo­pher Hamel-Smith, who leads FI­FA's le­gal team, opened the hear­ing with a re­quest to de­fer the case.

Hamel-Smith point­ed out that by virtue of FI­FA's de­ci­sion to sus­pend the TTFA's mem­ber­ship, last month, the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee led by busi­ness­man Robert Hadad, which was ap­point­ed by FI­FA to re­place the ex­ec­u­tive in March, ceased to func­tion.

"If they want to run the TTFA, that is en­tire­ly their busi­ness. Their is cer­tain­ly noth­ing stop­ping it based on FI­FA's sus­pen­sion," Hamel-Smith said, as he not­ed the FI­FA's ap­peal over the ju­ris­dic­tion to hear the case is card­ed for Oc­to­ber 19.

Re­spond­ing to Hamel-Smith, the ex­ec­u­tive's at­tor­ney Dr Emir Crowne sug­gest­ed that FI­FA had at­tempt­ed the ma­neu­ver pre­vi­ous­ly and failed.

"When FI­FA does not get its way it does not know what to do. They are not ac­cus­tom to that," Crowne said.

Gob­in ques­tioned FI­FA's claim over the exc­u­tive's abil­i­ty to take con­trol of the the as­so­ci­a­tion as she point­ed out that it main­tained that it on­ly recog­nis­es the com­mit­tee.

She al­so crit­i­cised it for re­peat­ed­ly stat­ing that it does not recog­nise the ju­ris­dic­tion of lo­cal courts while us­ing the court sys­tem to chal­lenge her de­ci­sion to con­tin­ue with the case be­fore the Court of Ap­peal.

"It makes a mock­ery of our sys­tem if a par­ty is not will­ing to ac­cept the rule of law in this coun­try," she said be­fore re­ject­ing the pro­pos­al.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions in the sub­stan­tive case, Crowne claimed that FI­FA's statutes, which speak to the ap­point­ment of such com­mit­tees to mem­ber fed­er­a­tions and as­so­ci­a­tions, was too vague to be con­sid­ered le­git­i­mate­ly bind­ing as they on­ly pro­vide for such a process in "ex­tra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances".

He said that at the time of the an­nounce­ment FI­FA claimed that the de­ci­sion was based on the as­so­ci­a­tion's po­ten­tial in­sol­ven­cy but pro­vid­ed no fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.

"There is ram­pant spec­u­la­tion but that is not ev­i­dence," Crowne said.

He said that fair­ness re­quired his clients be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond be­fore the de­ci­sion was tak­en as they have main­tained that they in­her­it­ed the as­so­ci­a­tion's dire fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion, when they were elect­ed in No­vem­ber, last year.

"As has been shown be­fore FI­FA and fair­ness prob­a­bly do not go hand in hand," Crowne said.

In terms of com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with the lo­cal leg­is­la­tion which es­tab­lished the TTFA and pre­scribes how it should be gov­erned, Crowne stat­ed that Par­lia­ment did not ex­press­ly recog­nise the su­prema­cy of FI­FA's laws in it.

He stat­ed that his clients did not have the re­mit to change the lo­cal leg­is­la­tion as re­quest­ed by FI­FA as a con­di­tion to lift­ing the in­def­i­nite sus­pen­sion.

"It can not be that a pri­vate ogan­i­sa­tion in Zurich, Switzer­land, over­rides this coun­try's Par­lia­ment," Crowne said.

Crowne was ques­tioned by Gob­in over his clients' de­ci­sion to seek an in­junc­tion from the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS), al­so based in Switzer­land, over the sus­pen­sion when it chal­lenged FI­FA's claim that that body is the cor­rect one to pre­side over the sub­stan­tive dis­pute.

Crowne said that the costs for the in­junc­tion was mar­gin­al com­pared to the sub­stan­tive case. He al­so not­ed that the sus­pen­sion is­sue oc­cured out­side of lo­cal ju­ris­dic­tion.

"It is a pri­vate ar­bi­tra­tion body for prof­it. It is not a court," Crowne said.

Wal­lace and his col­leagues are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Matthew Gayle, Crys­tal Paul and Ja­son Jones, while Jonathan Walk­er and Cherie Gopie ap­peared along­side Hamel-Smith for FI­FA.

ABOUT THE CASE (SIDE BAR)

Through the law­suit, Wal­lace and his three vice pres­i­dents — Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillips, and Su­san Joseph-War­rick are seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion that the de­ci­sion to re­move them in March and re­place them with a com­mit­tee com­pris­ing of busi­ness­man Robert Hadad, at­tor­ney Judy Daniels, and re­tired banker Nigel Ro­mano was null, void, and of no le­gal or bind­ing ef­fect.

They are al­so seek­ing a per­ma­nent in­junc­tion bar­ring FI­FA from med­dling in the TTFA's af­fairs by al­leged­ly seek­ing to cir­cum­vent the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process by re­mov­ing du­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers.

Gob­in has al­so been asked to de­cide whether FI­FA's statutes, un­der which the re­place­ment was done, are in con­for­mi­ty with the lo­cal leg­is­la­tion, which es­tab­lished the as­so­ci­a­tion.

Wal­lace and his team ini­tial­ly brought pro­ceed­ings against FI­FA in the Court for Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) but were forced to with­draw as they could not pay the the 40,000 Swiss francs (TT$276,000) in as­so­ci­at­ed costs.

Their po­si­tion was part­ly due to FI­FA's pol­i­cy to not pay its share of the fees and CAS's rules, which re­quire the oth­er par­ty to pay the full costs when the oth­er fails in its oblig­a­tions.

Af­ter the case was filed, FI­FA ap­plied for it to be struck out as it claimed that the TTFA by virtue of its mem­ber­ship with FI­FA agreed to for­go all le­gal ac­tion in lo­cal courts in favour of pro­ceed­ings be­fore the CAS.

The ap­pli­ca­tion was ini­tial­ly blanked by Gob­in, who ruled that the lo­cal courts are the ap­pro­pri­ate fo­rum to re­solve the dis­pute.

While the ap­peal against her rul­ing still pend­ing, Gob­in set the date for the tri­al of the case and gave FI­FA an ex­ten­sion to file its de­fence. FI­FA failed to meet the dead­line as it main­tained it po­si­tion that it did not ac­cept the ju­ris­dic­tion of the court in the mat­ter.

Wal­lace and his team al­so ob­tained an in­junc­tion against the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee af­ter it at­tempt­ed to fa­cil­i­tate a ex­tra­or­di­nary meet­ing among mem­bers to vote to with­draw the case.

The in­junc­tion, which will re­main in place un­til dis­charged by Gob­in, was not op­posed by FI­FA and was grant­ed.

Wal­lace and his team at­tempt­ed to with­draw the case on FI­FA's ex­tend­ed ul­ti­ma­tum of Sep­tem­ber 23 but filed the ap­pli­ca­tion to with­draw, which still had to be de­ter­mined be­fore the case could be con­sid­ered of­fi­cial­ly with­drawn, two min­utes past the dead­line.

Af­ter FI­FA's sus­pen­sion the fol­low­ing day, Wal­lace and his team filed an­oth­er ap­pli­ca­tion to with­draw the with­draw­al ap­pli­ca­tion, in which he ad­mit­ted that he was grudg­ing­ly dis­con­tin­u­ing the case based on a ma­jor­i­ty vote dur­ing an emer­gency meet­ing be­tween his team and stake­hold­ers.

The le­gal ma­neu­ver co­in­cid­ed with an an­nounce­ment from sec­ond vice pres­i­dent Joseph-War­rick, that she was re­sign­ing from her post.

The Unit­ed TTFA al­so ap­proached the CAS for a tem­po­rary stay of this coun­try's sus­pen­sion to al­low its par­tic­i­pa­tion in

Con­ca­caf's 2021 Gold Cup draw on Sep­tem­ber 28.

The hear­ing of the in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion was de­ferred af­ter Con­ca­caf an­nounced that its coun­cil had met and agreed to con­di­tion­al­ly keep T&T's place in the draw.

In the event, that the sus­pen­sion is not lift­ed by ei­ther FI­FA or the CAS by 5 pm on De­cem­ber 18, T&T will be re­placed by An­tigua and Bar­bu­da as the next high­est ranked team based on per­for­mances dur­ing the 2019 Con­ca­caf Na­tions League.