Privy Council rules against Grenada government
by Leroy Noel
Wednesday, April 7, 2004
ST. GEORGE‘S, Grenada: Five law lords of the
British Privy Council have ruled against the Grenada government in a case
involving a Dominican company Dipcon Engineering, thus overturning a judgment
made by the OECS Court of Appeal.
"The government would now have to find close
to $17 million dollars in these hard economic times,” says Public Relations
Officer of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Nazim
Burke, “to pay out due to its lack of respect for people and disregard for
law.” He believes that the ruling New
National Party government of Dr. Keith Mitchell is bringing more hardship on
Grenadians in light of this ruling that he says was expected.
In 1994 the government entered into an agreement with Dipcon for the lease of
a quarry and provided for it to be worked for an initial period of 10 years.
However the government terminated the agreement in November 1995 and in 1996
forcibly dispossessed Dipcon from the quarry.
In June 2001, adviser to the Grenada government Jamaican born Hugh Wildman
issued proceedings against Justice Alleyne alleging bias or real danger of
bias seeking a declaration that the judge ought not to adjudicate in any
matter in which Mr. Wildman appears as attorney at law. This action was
roundly dismissed as wholly misconceived and frivolous, vexatious and an abuse
of the process of the court. Justice Brian
Alleyne ruled then that the government should pay special damages to Dipcon in
the sum of some $11.2 million plus interest.
But in an appeal to the OECS court of appeal, Justice Alleyne’s judgment was
overturned. Attorneys for Dipcon, Celia Clyne Edwards and Company, appealed to
the British Privy Council where the law lords castigated the appeal court for
not having enough regard for Dipcon’s interests.
Lord Brown of Eaton in delivering his judgment said, "The court had properly
to have had regard not merely to the government’s interest in this but also to
Dipcon's. Could it really be right, five years after a regular judgment was
entered following the government’s unexplained breach of a peremptory order,
to deprive Dipcon of its benefits and at that stage require them to litigate a
claim which for four and a half years they had no reason to suppose would be
contested? It seems unlikely that it could and certainly to have done so would
have required a process of reasoning beyond that to be found in the Court of
Appeal's judgment."
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