State ordered to pay rental company almost $400K over URP contract

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The State has been or­dered to pay al­most $400,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a car rental com­pa­ny fol­low­ing a move to ter­mi­nate its con­trac­tu­al agree­ment to pro­vide ve­hi­cles for the now-de­funct Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP).

High Court Judge West­min James or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for Dou­ble R Au­to Rentals af­ter up­hold­ing its case against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ear­li­er this month.

The law­suit re­lat­ed to the com­pa­ny’s com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ship with the Min­istry of Works, which be­gan in 2017.

The com­pa­ny, through its at­tor­neys Win­ston Seenath, SC, and Sharon Ra­moutar, filed the case af­ter the min­istry stopped mak­ing pay­ments in Oc­to­ber 2021.

It sought $160,250, which rep­re­sent­ed the ar­rears owed for ve­hi­cle rentals, and $239,342 for re­pairs to the rent­ed ve­hi­cles for dam­age which oc­curred while in the min­istry’s pos­ses­sion.

The com­pa­ny al­so sought $351,000, which rep­re­sent­ed the bal­ance it would have re­ceived if the min­istry had not end­ed its lease of four Maz­da BT-50 pick-up trucks ear­ly.

Jus­tice James ruled that the com­pa­ny had proven its claim in re­la­tion to the ar­rears on a bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties.

He crit­i­cised the min­istry for seek­ing to chal­lenge the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial records with­out pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence of its own.

Jus­tice James on­ly award­ed $158,500 for ve­hi­cle re­pairs as he not­ed that the fig­ure ini­tial­ly sought in the case was based on es­ti­mates the com­pa­ny re­ceived and not the ac­tu­al fees it even­tu­al­ly paid.

He not­ed that the com­pa­ny could not be crit­i­cised for choos­ing the most eco­nom­ic method for hav­ing the re­pairs done.

“On the ev­i­dence be­fore the court, the claimant act­ed rea­son­ably in ob­tain­ing re­pairs from its long-stand­ing re­pair­er at costs be­low the in­de­pen­dent es­ti­mates,” he added.

Deal­ing with the com­pen­sa­tion sought by the com­pa­ny for breach of the agree­ment for the four pick-up trucks, Jus­tice James not­ed that the min­istry claimed that it nev­er agreed to a four-year con­tract as claimed.

How­ev­er, he point­ed out that the min­istry’s po­si­tion was un­der­mined by a let­ter sent by one of its of­fi­cials to the com­pa­ny’s bank to help it se­cure a loan for the ve­hi­cles.

In the let­ter, the of­fi­cial in­di­cat­ed that there was a four-year con­tract for the trucks at a rate of $6,000 per month per truck.

While Jus­tice James ruled that the com­pa­ny was en­ti­tled to com­pen­sa­tion, he not­ed that it could not ex­pect to re­ceive the full amount it would have, had the agree­ment not been ter­mi­nat­ed 13 months be­fore it was due to ex­pire.

“The court must in­stead de­ter­mine the ac­tu­al fi­nan­cial loss caused by the breach. In many com­mer­cial con­tracts, the an­tic­i­pat­ed prof­it rep­re­sents on­ly part of the con­tract price, the bal­ance re­flect­ing ex­pens­es that would have been in­curred in per­form­ing the con­tract,” Jus­tice James said.

He found that $80,000 would be ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion for the com­pa­ny.

As part of the judg­ment, Jus­tice James or­dered the State to pay the com­pa­ny $66,288.28 in le­gal costs.

The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Tri­cia Ram­lo­gan and Brent James.