The government was yesterday ordered to pay over $1.7 billion in damages to Toolsie Persaud Limited (TPL), after losing its challenge to the company’s ownership of land at Turkeyen, including the site of the MovieTowne cinema complex and shopping mall.
The judgment in the legal dispute, which dates decades, was handed down yesterday morning by Justice Brassington Reynolds, who also ordered the government to pay interest as well as half a million dollars to the hardware company in court costs.
In its action in the High Court for damages against the government and its agent, the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), the plaintiff TPL argued that it never repudiated its 1987 agreement by which it bought from the State, led then by the PNC government, several plots of land in the disputed Turkeyen/Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara area.