In its appeal against a Full Court ruling awarding rice miller Arnold Sankar close to $100 million that it was ordered to pay for breach of a paddy deal, the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) is arguing that the judges made several legal errors.
The Rice Board, in its notice of appeal, is arguing that Justices Jo-Ann Barlow and Simone Morris-Ramlall erred and misdirected themselves in law by finding that Justice Diana Insanally, before whom Sankar’s lawsuit was initially being heard, had jurisdiction to award Sankar judgment for unliquidated damages.
As a matter of fact, the Rice Board is of the view that since Sankar’s judgment award was made on the basis of a specifically endorsed writ, Justice Insanally was lawfully correct in declining to grant any such award in the first place. It says that the unliquidated claim was improperly couched in a specifically indorsed writ.
GRDB argues, too, that the Full Court judges erred by making the award without first hearing evidence at trial and in arriving at the finding that Justice Insanally at first instance had no inherent or other jurisdiction or discretion to revisit set aside/recall a previous interlocutory order she had made during the course of the proceedings before her.
It is seeking to have the decision of the Full Court wholly reversed and or set aside and for the proceedings at first instance to be remitted to the High Court for trial of the substantive claim.
A date is yet to be fixed for hearing of the appeal.
In their ruling of April 23rd this year, Justices Barlow and Morris-Ramlall awarded Sankar the full sum of $99,670,273, which he said lost as a result of the Rice Board’s breach of the paddy-supply deal.
Additionally they ordered GRDB to pay over to Sankar interest at a rate of 6% per annum from November 7th, 2016 when he filed his court action, to the date of judgment, which was passed on April 23rd.
The Rice Board was also to pay interest at a rate of 4% per annum from the date of judgment until the amount has been paid in full.
Apart from these sums, Sankar was granted $249,963 in High Court costs he was seeking, in addition to securing $50,000 in costs from the Full Court.
The thrust of Sankar’s appeal to the Full Court surrounded his application to strike out a late defence, which the GRDB sought to have filed before Justice Insanally.
The judge had granted to the GRDB several opportunities to file but it did not comply with the timelines set by the court. When it did file its defence, however, it had been out of time.
To the late defence the Rice Board was seeking to have filed, attorneys Anil Nandlall, Manoj Narayan and Rajendra Jaigobin, who represented Sankar, applied to have it struck out, asking that judgment be entered for the plaintiff.
They were, however, denied.
It was this denial that saw them appealing to the Full Court.
Narayan had argued that the Attorney General’s Chambers, by which the Rice Board was being represented before Justice Insanally, needed to have filed for “relief from sanctions,” to the out-of-time filing but failed to do so. It was in these circumstances that counsel argued judgment needed to be granted in his client’s favour.
Endorsing the plaintiff’s arguments, Justices Barlow and Morris-Ramlall ruled that Justice Insanally ought to have awarded judgment at that point as she would have become duty-bound to do.
The defendants did not complete their necessary filings within the 14 days for which the law orders nor did they have relief from sanction.
The Full Court noted that the sanction in the order operated automatically in default of the party against whom the order was made.
Since the award made in favour of Sankar by the Full Court, the GRDB made no payments to the rice miller. As a result, left with no alternatives to enforce the judgment, Sankar through his agents executed a levy on assets belonging to the Rice Board, in which two vehicles were seized.
The agent attached to his attorneys’ chambers had told this newspaper that while they were only able to seize two vehicles, they intend to return some other time to levy on other assets once payment is not forthcoming.
On November 16th, however, GRDB applied and was granted its request by the Court of Appeal to challenge the Full Court ruling. At that hearing, counsel for the appellants, Timothy Jonas, had said that he will be taking steps to also apply for a stay of the judgment.
The rice miller, of the Arnold Sankar and Sons Rice Mill, of Airy Hall Essequibo Coast, had moved to the courts over a 2015 paddy deal, which went sour after he ordered paddy he said the Rice Board requested but for which it never paid.
