BY FRANCIS JOSEPH
The Law Chambers of Anand Ramlogan SC has sent a pre-action protocol letter to Port-of-Spain South Member of Parliament, Keith Scotland SC and another lawyer, proposing to file claims among other things, for professional negligence, breach of contract, negligent misstatement and deceit.In a letter dated June 24, the pre-action protocol letter named Scotland and Keisha Kydd-Hannibal, of Virtus Chambers.In the letter, attorney Ganesh Saroop said Freedom Chambers acts for
 the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC). “T&TEC has instructed us to bring proceedings against you arising out of your conduct of three successive claims against Flavorite Foods Limited for the recovery of $2,392,220.11 in unpaid electricity charges, together with interest and costs. The claims will be advanced in professional negligence, breach of contract, fraudulent and/or negligent misstatement and deceit.”The letter continued, “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. Having regard to the seriousness of the misrepresentations and negligence, and level of the misconduct, it will also seek aggravated and exemplary damages.
BACKGROUND
The letter further states:”This was no ordinary commercial retainer, and the debt at its heart was no ordinary debt. It represented the cost of electricity supplied by a public utility, over several years, to a substantial private commercial enterprise, precisely the kind of debt for which ordinary citizens and businesses are disconnected, promptly and without ceremony, when they do not pay. Flavorite was treated differently. “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. The political relationships surrounding these events cannot responsibly be ignored. “The principal figure behind Flavorite, its Chairman Mr Louis André Monteil, was a former Treasurer of the People’s National Movement, a former Chairman of the Home Mortgage Bank, and a person of significance within the then governing administration. “Mr Scotland was, at the material time, a PNM Member of Parliament; he subsequently took silk and, on 26 July 2024, was sworn into Cabinet. Those relationships did not, without more, prevent Mr Scotland from accepting the retainer. They 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. What followed was very different. Three claims were commenced, and not one was brought to judgment. The first two were never properly prosecuted and were struck out automatically. The third was commenced without T&TEC’s knowledge or authority, without the permission required after two earlier strikeouts and was itself never validly served. “For much of this period T&TEC was assured, repeatedly, that applications for default judgment had been filed, were before the Registrar, were being chased through the Registry and the Judicial Support Office and had in due course been withdrawn and refiled.  “The court records, and the Registrar’s own confirmations, establish that no request or application for default judgment was ever filed in either the 2022 or the 2023 claim. T&TEC was thus led to believe that the delay lay with the administration of the Court, when its true cause was the failure of its own attorneys to take the most basic procedural steps. “The result is that more than $2.39 million in public money, together with a substantial claim for interest, is, no longer recoverable from Flavorite. On 21 October 2022, T&TEC sent Flavorite a pre-action protocol letter demanding payment of $2,392,220.11, to which Flavorite gave no substantive response. “By letter dated 16 November 2022, T&TEC retained Mr Scotland, practising through Virtus Chambers, to commence and diligently prosecute proceedings to recover the debt, interest and costs. The retainer was entered into personally with Mr Scotland; Virtus Chambers was registered as his individual business name, and not as a separate company or partnership. Ms Kydd-Hannibal thereafter conducted the principal correspondence, appeared as filing and instructing attorney, and reported to T&TEC on the progress of the claims, while Mr Scotland was identified as counsel, copied into material correspondence, and repeatedly described as advising upon the litigation strategy. “By accepting that retainer, you undertook to exercise the care, skill and diligence reasonably to be expected of competent attorneys conducting civil debt-recovery proceedings. That meant, at the very least, properly serving the claims and proving service, keeping deadlines, seeking extensions or alternative service where required, obtaining T&TEC’s informed and proper authority before abandoning or replacing proceedings, reporting accurately on the state of the litigation, and preserving T&TEC’s cause of action before limitation expired.”Â
The letter gave both attorneys 28 days in which to respond.
