T&TEC threatens legal action against Scotland over $2.4M debt claim

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) has threat­ened to sue Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land 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 ice cream man­u­fac­tur­er Fla­vorite Foods Ltd. 

The le­gal threat against Scot­land and fel­low at­tor­ney Keisha Ky­dd-Han­ni­bal, both of Vir­tus Cham­bers, was made in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent yes­ter­day by T&TEC’s lawyers led by 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 lev­el of the mis­con­duct, it will al­so seek ag­gra­vat­ed and ex­em­plary dam­ages,” he added. 

The pro­posed claim re­lates to three iden­ti­cal law­suits filed in T&TEC’s name against Fla­vorite Foods over the out­stand­ing debt. 

Sa­roop claimed that two were au­to­mat­i­cal­ly struck out due to the fail­ure to ad­vance the case and seek a de­fault judg­ment af­ter the com­pa­ny failed to en­ter a de­fence.  

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

Sa­roop said 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 (T&TEC) as a PNM MP, Sa­roop said: “They (the re­la­tion­ships) did, how­ev­er, make in­de­pen­dence, trans­paren­cy, dili­gence and com­plete can­dour in­dis­pens­able.”

He added, “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.” 

Sa­roop claimed that al­though Ky­dd-Han­ni­bal al­leged­ly made rep­re­sen­ta­tions to T&TEC of­fi­cials that ap­pli­ca­tions for de­fault judg­ments in the first two cas­es were be­ing pur­sued, sub­se­quent checks with the Supreme Court Reg­istry re­vealed that such did not oc­cur. 

He claimed that the third case was filed sole­ly by Ky­dd-Han­ni­bal with­out T&TEC’s in­volve­ment, and it (the com­mis­sion) on­ly be­came aware of it af­ter a change of at­tor­neys. 

He sug­gest­ed that Scot­land could not es­cape li­a­bil­i­ty for what tran­spired based on Ky­dd-Han­ni­bal do­ing the fil­ings and han­dling com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the com­mis­sion.

Sa­roop stat­ed that the com­mis­sion suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant loss­es as a re­sult of the duo’s pur­port­ed con­duct, as it was no longer able to pur­sue a claim against Fla­vorite Foods. 

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

Re­spond­ing to the al­le­ga­tions out­side of 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.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Scot­land con­firmed that he re­ceived the let­ter and said his at­tor­neys would pro­vide a re­sponse in due course.