T&TEC threatens lawsuit against Keith Scotland

Derek Achong

The T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) has threat­ened to sue Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land, SC, and a mem­ber of his law cham­bers over the rep­re­sen­ta­tion they pro­vid­ed in its bid to re­cov­er ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.4 mil­lion in un­paid elec­tric­i­ty charges from now-de­funct ice cream man­u­fac­tur­er Fla­vorite Foods Lim­it­ed.

The le­gal threat against Scot­land and fel­low at­tor­ney Keisha Ky­dd-Han­ni­bal, both of Vir­tus Cham­bers, was made in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to­day by T&TEC's lawyers, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan of Free­dom Law Cham­bers.

The let­ter was sent a lit­tle over a week af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised con­cerns over the duo's pro­fes­sion­al con­duct in Par­lia­ment.

In the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, at­tor­ney Ganesh Sa­roop claimed pro­fes­sion­al neg­li­gence, breach of con­tract, fraud­u­lent and/or neg­li­gent mis­state­ment, and de­ceit against the duo.

"T&TEC will seek dam­ages re­flect­ing the val­ue of the claim and the en­force­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty it has lost, to­geth­er with its wast­ed, in­ves­tiga­tive and re­me­di­al ex­pen­di­ture, in­ter­est and any fur­ther con­se­quen­tial loss the ev­i­dence es­tab­lish­es," Sa­roop said.

"Hav­ing re­gard to the se­ri­ous­ness of the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions and neg­li­gence, and the lev­el of the mis­con­duct, it will al­so seek ag­gra­vat­ed and ex­em­plary dam­ages," he added.

The law­suit re­lates to three iden­ti­cal law­suits filed in T&TEC's name against Fla­vorite Foods over the out­stand­ing debt. Sa­roop claimed two were au­to­mat­i­cal­ly struck out due to the fail­ure to ad­vance the case af­ter the com­pa­ny failed to en­ter a de­fence.

He claimed the third was com­menced with­out T&TEC's knowl­edge and au­thor­i­ty and was dis­missed due to the fail­ure to ad­dress the out­comes of the two pre­vi­ous cas­es and be­cause it was nev­er valid­ly served.

Pro­vid­ing back­ground to the law­suit, Sa­roop claimed the com­pa­ny was giv­en pref­er­en­tial treat­ment as it was not dis­con­nect­ed de­spite its sig­nif­i­cant un­paid debt.

"It failed to pay its pe­ri­od­ic bills, broke one pay­ment arrange­ment af­ter an­oth­er, ten­dered cheques that were dis­hon­oured, and yet con­tin­ued to re­ceive elec­tric­i­ty while its ar­rears climbed," Sa­roop said.

He point­ed out the com­pa­ny was owned by Louis An­dre Mon­teil, who for­mer­ly served as Trea­sur­er of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

Not­ing Mon­teil's con­nec­tion with the PNM did not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly pre­vent Scot­land from rep­re­sent­ing it as a PNM MP, Sa­roop said: "They (the re­la­tion­ships) did, how­ev­er, make in­de­pen­dence, trans­paren­cy, dili­gence and com­plete can­dour in­dis­pens­able."

"T&TEC was en­ti­tled to ex­pect that no po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty, no per­son­al re­la­tion­ship, and no con­flict of in­ter­est or oth­er ex­tra­ne­ous con­sid­er­a­tion would be per­mit­ted to touch pro­ceed­ings brought to re­cov­er pub­lic mon­ey," he added.

Sa­roop gave Scot­land and Ky­dd-Han­ni­bal 28 days in which to pro­vide re­spons­es ei­ther ad­mit­ting or deny­ing li­a­bil­i­ty and giv­ing an ex­pla­na­tion of their pur­port­ed con­duct be­fore a law­suit is filed.

Re­spond­ing to the al­le­ga­tions out­side Par­lia­ment last week, Scot­land de­nied any wrong­do­ing as he chal­lenged Per­sad-Bisses­sar to make the al­le­ga­tions when she is not cov­ered by Par­lia­men­tary Priv­i­lege.

“I in­vite the Prime Min­is­ter to make these claims out­side of the Par­lia­ment. We have done the claim, we did the en­try for judg­ment in de­fault of ap­pear­ance on Fla­vorite, and to pre­sume or to make an al­le­ga­tion that be­cause (An­dre) Mon­teil (Fla­vorite own­er) is some PNM mem­ber, that there was some col­lu­sion to sup­press a T&TEC mat­ter is a se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tion, and I call up­on her to make those al­le­ga­tions out­side of the Par­lia­ment.”

Hold­ing up a doc­u­ment with a court stamp, Scot­land said there is cur­rent­ly a re­quest for en­try of judg­ment in de­fault, with a query from the reg­is­trar pend­ing. How­ev­er, he said he could not com­ment on the re­quest, as that may be in breach of client/at­tor­ney priv­i­lege.

“I have the doc­u­men­ta­tions in my hand, where not on­ly was the claim re­filed, but a judg­ment in de­fault of ap­pear­ance was made, sup­port­ing with all the doc­u­ments, and we even have a query from the reg­is­trar, query­ing some of the is­sues that will raise the judg­ment, and that was not told to the pub­lic, and I want to set the record straight,” Scot­land said.

He added, “What we will not do is I will not be si­lenced. I will rile against any in­jus­tice, be it against par­lia­men­tary staff, be it against peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and they will not si­lence my voice with at­tacks on my char­ac­ter, at­tacks on me, and by ex­ten­sion, my fam­i­ly. I not tak­ing that!”

Con­tact­ed to­day, Scot­land said he had re­ceived the let­ter and his at­tor­neys would re­spond in due course. He said he main­tains what he said out­side Par­lia­ment.