Pritipaul Singh Investment (PSI) has encountered another snag in its quest to claim prime waterfront Providence lands from Demerara Contractors and Engineers Limited (DCEL) and Sterling Products Limited (SPL).
The Guyana Court of Appeal has denied a stay which the seafood processing company had been seeking, of a judgment declaring it to have been trespassing on the lands lawfully owned by SPL.
Meanwhile, the court has commenced hearing arguments regarding PSI’s stay-request in the DCEL matter, on which it is likely to pronounce soon.
The appellate court on Friday last, denied PSI’s request for a stay against SPL and began hearing arguments in the challenge against DCEL on Wednesday.
While defeated in its application against SPL, PSI (the Appellant), is now hoping that the Court of Appeal would grant its application staying the judgment of the High Court in favour of DCEL.
Supreme Court judges Nareshwar Harnanan and Jo-Ann Barlow had ruled in the DCEL and SPL matters respectively, that PSI had been trespassing on lands owned by the two companies.
In both matters—Proprietor of PSI—Pritipaul Singh—had mounted the claim of proprietary estoppel in a bid to hold on to the properties.
The judges, however, found PSI’s claim to proprietary estoppel to have been without merit.
As Justice Nareshwar Harnanan had found in the claim brought by DCEL, Justice Barlow also found that Sterling Products Limited had no knowledge that PSI had entered on its land and was doing constructions.
The Court in these separate challenges brought against PSI, had found that the dense vegetation surrounding their respective plots had obscured vision and caused both DCEL and SPL from being aware that PSI was trespassing.
As it had done when approached by DCEL, PSI also refused to acknowledge that it was on SPL’s land.
To successfully ground a claim in proprietary estoppel—the defendant (in this case PSI)—would have had to have shown that the Claimants (DCEL and SPL)—knew of PSI’s presence and development of the land and had done nothing to assert their (DCEL and SPL’s) right.
Declaring PSI to have had no legal rights/claims to the properties in dispute, both judges had said that there existed no evidence that DCEL and SPL sat idly by and encouraged PSI to act as it did—by developing the lands—later seeking to benefit therefrom.
From evidence presented in both matters, Singh had himself admitted that the lands did not belong to his Company.
In his judgment of October, 2020 Justice Harnanan had ordered the seafood processing company to vacate no later than January of this year. Justice Barlow would render her ruling two months later ordering PSI to vacate SPL’s land.
PSI is yet to comply with the court orders.
The embattled lands are Lot W of Providence belonging to DCEL—a subsidiary of Demerara Distillers Limited (DDL); and plots F and F1 and Lot E of Plantation Providence, belonging to SPL.
DCEL is being represented by Senior Counsel Timothy Jonas; and SPL, by attorney Nikhil Ramkarran.
Meanwhile PSI is represented by Neil Boston SC and Savion David-Long.
