Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

The ven­dors of the Break­fast Shed have se­cured an­oth­er le­gal vic­to­ry af­ter the Court of Ap­peal re­fused an ap­pli­ca­tion by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­COTT) to have its ap­peal heard as an ur­gent mat­ter.

The de­ci­sion means an in­junc­tion grant­ed by the High Court on June 30 re­mains in ef­fect, al­low­ing the Break­fast Shed to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing un­til the sub­stan­tive le­gal dis­pute is heard in Jan­u­ary 2027.

Pres­i­dent of the Femmes du Chalet Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Ltd, which op­er­ates the Break­fast Shed, Robert Le Hunte wel­comed the rul­ing, say­ing it pro­vides sta­bil­i­ty for ven­dors and their fam­i­lies while the courts de­ter­mine the wider is­sues be­tween the co­op­er­a­tive and UDe­COTT.

Le Hunte said yes­ter­day’s de­ci­sion marked the sec­ond time the courts had re­ject­ed at­tempts to re­move ven­dors be­fore the sub­stan­tive is­sues are de­ter­mined.

The High Court, in grant­i­ng the in­junc­tion on June 30, de­ter­mined that there was a se­ri­ous mat­ter to be tried and that the bal­ance of jus­tice favoured al­low­ing the ven­dors to re­main in pos­ses­sion pend­ing the out­come of the case. The court al­so di­rect­ed that the mat­ter pro­ceed to an ex­pe­dit­ed tri­al in Jan­u­ary 2027.

Le Hunte said the lat­est rul­ing con­firmed there was no ba­sis for by­pass­ing the ju­di­cial process al­ready es­tab­lished.

The Break­fast Shed dis­pute has cen­tred on UDe­COTT’s le­gal ac­tion against the co­op­er­a­tive, in­clud­ing claims in­volv­ing out­stand­ing pay­ments.

How­ev­er, Le Hunte said the mat­ter was not sim­ply about rent, ar­gu­ing that sev­er­al wider is­sues must be ex­am­ined by the court.

“This case has nev­er sim­ply been about rent. It con­cerns the re­lo­ca­tion of one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s old­est com­mu­ni­ty in­sti­tu­tions in the na­tion­al in­ter­est, the as­sur­ances that ac­com­pa­nied that re­lo­ca­tion, the fi­nan­cial arrange­ments un­der which the Break­fast Shed has op­er­at­ed for al­most two decades, and sub­stan­tial claims and coun­ter­claims that must ul­ti­mate­ly be de­ter­mined by the court,” he said.

The co­op­er­a­tive main­tains that it was sub­ject­ed to elec­tric­i­ty charges sub­stan­tial­ly high­er than what should have been payable, cre­at­ing a sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial bur­den.

Le Hunte said those mat­ters, along with the co­op­er­a­tive’s coun­ter­claims against UDe­COTT, would be ad­dressed when the ev­i­dence is pre­sent­ed at tri­al.

He al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that the mat­ter had re­turned to the courts in­stead of pro­gress­ing through dis­cus­sions be­tween the par­ties.

“Lit­i­ga­tion should nev­er be­come a sub­sti­tute for di­a­logue, par­tic­u­lar­ly where the liveli­hoods of or­di­nary cit­i­zens are at stake,” he said.