Em­bat­tled T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his Unit­ed TTFA ex­ec­u­tive team’s law­suit against FI­FA is ex­pect­ed to kick off on Friday with Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in as ref­er­ee.

Dur­ing the vir­tu­al hear­ing, Gob­in is ex­pect­ed to hear sub­mis­sions in the case be­fore de­liv­er­ing her de­ci­sion or re­serv­ing it un­til a lat­er date.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that FI­FA’s le­gal team at­tempt­ed to make last ditched tack­le on the eve of the case as they ap­pealed to Gob­in to de­fer her rul­ing ear­li­er this week.

In cor­re­spon­dence to Gob­in and the op­pos­ing side, at­tor­ney Cherie Gopie sug­gest­ed that the ex­pe­dit­ed res­o­lu­tion of the case was not nec­es­sary in the cir­cum­stances as the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, ap­point­ed by FI­FA in March to re­place Wal­lace and his team, had es­sen­tial­ly ceased to func­tion as a re­sult of her client’s de­ci­sion to in­def­i­nite­ly sus­pend the TTFA’s mem­ber­ship be­cause of the case.

Gopie al­so re­it­er­at­ed FI­FA’s po­si­tion that ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in the case be­fore Gob­in could com­pro­mise its po­si­tion in its pend­ing ap­peal over her ju­ris­dic­tion to hear the sub­stan­tive case on Oc­to­ber 19.

Re­spond­ing to Gopie, the TTFA’s lawyer Matthew Gayle ob­ject­ed to the post­pone­ment as he not­ed that the is­sues to be re­solved are wider than sug­gest­ed by FI­FA.

He not­ed that FI­FA had pre­vi­ous­ly at­tempt­ed to have the pro­ceed­ings stayed on sim­i­lar grounds but was de­nied.

Gob­in even­tu­al­ly agreed with Gayle and re­ject­ed the pro­posed move.

On Mon­day, Ap­peal Court Judge Mal­colm Holdip grant­ed the TTFA’s ap­pli­ca­tion for se­cu­ri­ty of costs for the ap­peal.

Holdip or­dered FI­FA to pay $60,000 to the court in the event that the TTFA suc­cess­ful­ly de­fends the ap­peal and is en­ti­tled to re­im­burse­ment of the le­gal costs in­curred in de­fend­ing it.

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 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 as Oc­to­ber 9 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, 23 min­utes past the dead­line (3 pm TT time).

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 ma­noeu­vre co­in­cid­ed with an an­nounce­ment from sec­ond vice pres­i­dent Joseph-War­rick, that she was re­sign­ing from her post and as pres­i­dent of the Women’s League Foot­ball (WoLF) on Sep­tem­ber 25.

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.

Wal­lace and his col­leagues are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Dr Emir Crowne, Crys­tal Paul, and Ja­son Jones, while Christo­pher Hamel-Smith, SC, and Jonathan Walk­er are al­so ap­pear­ing for FI­FA.