The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) says a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to it by an at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing a Ram­jat­tan Trace, La Hor­quet­ta squat­ter, did not meet the re­quire­ments set out in the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Civ­il Pro­ceed­ings Rules 2016.

The cor­po­ra­tion ar­gues that it al­so has sev­en days and not 24 hours to re­spond to the let­ter to al­low for ad­e­quate le­gal re­view.

On Mon­day, Ram­jat­tan Trace res­i­dent, Ann Marie Lep­lat­te sent the let­ter through her at­tor­ney, Bri­an Baig, de­mand­ing the HDC pro­vide proof of its au­thor­i­ty to de­mol­ish the prop­er­ty. The HDC was giv­en 24 hours to re­spond.

How­ev­er, the HDC dis­put­ed Baig’s re­quest on sev­er­al grounds. 

On Feb­ru­ary 6, the Land Set­tle­ment Agency and the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands, along with crews and po­lice of­fi­cers, de­mol­ished 12 il­le­gal struc­tures at the site. The state agency said the res­i­dents re­ceived evic­tion no­tices in Oc­to­ber last year telling them to va­cate by the end of Jan­u­ary.

The HDC had said it had in­for­ma­tion that fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty was tak­ing place, as State land was be­ing il­le­gal­ly sold to peo­ple who had re­cent­ly con­struct­ed hous­es.

Yes­ter­day, the HDC re­ject­ed the claims of wrong­do­ing made in the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter, par­tic­u­lar­ly the al­le­ga­tions of tres­pass and ad­verse pos­ses­sion. 

It said, “Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the claims set out in the let­ter fail to es­tab­lish a legal­ly recog­nised cause of ac­tion. The al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing, in­clud­ing as­ser­tions of tres­pass and ad­verse pos­ses­sion, lack any ev­i­den­tiary or le­gal foun­da­tion against the HDC.

“The as­ser­tion that a home was de­mol­ished by in­di­vid­u­als ‘op­er­at­ing up­on the in­struc­tions of per­sons wear­ing cloth­ing with the let­ters HDC’ is un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed and cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied.

“HDC did not is­sue, nor was it in a po­si­tion to is­sue, any such di­rec­tive to the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands to de­mol­ish any struc­ture. It is note­wor­thy that the pur­port­ed let­ter fails to ref­er­ence the law­ful com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion of 80.73 acres of land at La Cule­bra, Tumpuna Road, South of Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, Ari­ma, ex­e­cut­ed by the State un­der the Land Ac­qui­si­tion Act, Chap. 58:01. Fur­ther­more, it does not ac­knowl­edge that No­tices to Va­cate had been pre­vi­ous­ly is­sued to all rel­e­vant oc­cu­pants by the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands be­fore Feb­ru­ary 6, 2025. These omis­sions are ma­te­r­i­al and sig­nif­i­cant­ly un­der­mine any ar­gu­ment that could be ad­vanced by the sender of the let­ter.”

The res­i­dents have re­peat­ed­ly ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of the evic­tion no­tices but have com­plained that they were un­signed so they had no one to con­tact to plead their case. The pre-ac­tion let­ter ar­gued that the de­mo­li­tion was un­jus­ti­fied, say­ing Lep­lat­te had lived on and de­vel­oped the land since 1982.