The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) has ruled that summary judgment appeals of High Court decisions must be made to the Full Court rather than the Court of Appeal, despite a long established practice of doing so.
The CCJ handed down the ruling on April 16 in dismissing the appeal of Alfred Chung and Ingrid Campbell, who sought to challenge a High Court decision in the favour of the receivership AIC Battery and Automotive Services Company Limited.
With the ruling, the CCJ ruling has resolved which court appeals should be made to in summary judgment cases.
Chung and Campbell had owned AIC Battery and Automotive Services Com-pany Limited. The company had borrowed money from Republic Bank (then NBIC) and the loans were secured by debentures—unsecured loan certificates issued by a company—over the company’s property.
The company failed to repay the loans and as such the bank appointed a receiver, who proceeded to enter into an agreement of sale of the property so as to clear the amount owed to the bank.
The receiver then requested that Chung and Campbell removed from the top flat of the property—where they resided—to carry out the sale but they refused and an order requesting their removal was seek through the High Court.
The then judge, Justice B S Roy, granted judgment in favour of the receiver but this caused Chung and Campbell to move to the Court of Appeal, where they appealed the matter.
But the Court of Appeal concluded that it had “no jurisdiction to hear and rule on an appeal from an order emanating from a specifically endorsed writ even though that order may be the final order because the said proceedings ranked as summary proceedings…”
The appeal was subsequently dismissed and Chung and Campbell, through their attorney Saphier Husain, took the issue to the CCJ.
In handing down its decision on the case, the CCJ said that the “Full Court is the correct forum for the determination of appeals arising from orders made under Order 12 of the Rules of the Court.”
The CCJ also said that Order 12’s purpose is to “enable a plaintiff to obtain summary judgment without trial if he can prove his claim clearly, and if the defendant is unable to set up a bonafide defence or raise an issue against the claim which was ought to be tried.”
Based on these facts, among others, the appeal was dismissed and the order of the Court of Appeal was affirmed.
Andrew Pollard, counsel for the receiver, said that the decision is an important one for Guyana’s jurisprudence as it ends an established practiced and has settled which court is the proper forum in summary judgment appeals.
