The Court of Ap­peal has or­dered CEPEP Con­trac­tor East­man En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed to pay CEPEP’s le­gal costs af­ter the con­clu­sion of an ap­peal con­cern­ing the use of an Al­ter­na­tive Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion clause in the par­ties’ con­tract.

The court held that the con­trac­tor was wrong to by­pass the clause by fil­ing a claim in the courts. It stat­ed that the par­ties had agreed to use dis­pute res­o­lu­tion be­fore ap­proach­ing the courts and that by­pass­ing the process re­moved the pur­pose of the agreed pro­ce­dure.

Se­nior Coun­sel Lar­ry Lal­la, who ap­peared for the con­trac­tor with at­tor­neys Ka­reem Mar­celle and St. Clair Michael O’Neil, ar­gued that the court should make no or­der as to costs. Coun­sel sub­mit­ted that each par­ty should bear its own costs be­cause the Court of Ap­peal ruled that the tri­al judge erred in re­fer­ring the mat­ter to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

The court, how­ev­er, re­ject­ed the ar­gu­ment in a unan­i­mous judg­ment by Jus­tices Ra­jku­mar, Aboud and Rahim. The Court ac­cept­ed CEPEP’s sub­mis­sion that the re­fer­ral is­sue was a mi­nor part of the ap­peal and did not jus­ti­fy any change to the orig­i­nal costs or­der. The Court found that the main is­sue con­cerned the cir­cum­stances in which Al­ter­na­tive Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion claus­es op­er­ate as a con­di­tion prece­dent to lit­i­ga­tion.

The Court stat­ed that the re­fer­ral to the DPP was not a sig­nif­i­cant as­pect of the ap­peal and did not oc­cu­py any re­al time dur­ing the hear­ing. The Court held that the is­sue did not af­fect the main bases of the stay ap­pli­ca­tion or the is­sues de­ter­mined by the tri­al judge and the Court of Ap­peal.

The Court or­dered the los­ing par­ty to pay CEPEP two thirds of its le­gal costs, sub­ject to a 20 per cent dis­count to ac­count for the re­ver­sal of the re­fer­ral to the DPP.

CEPEP has called on Con­trac­tors to fol­low their con­trac­tu­al terms and stat­ed that it re­mains com­mit­ted to the rule of law.