Rowley goes to Privy Council to fight for Mason Hall goat farm

FORMER prime minister Dr Keith Rowley has taken his case to the UK-based Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to resolve a long-standing land dispute over his Mason Hall, Tobago, goat farm.

The matter, which involves a dispute over a 56.5 acre parcel of land at Alma Estate, was heard on July 3 before Law Lords Michael Townley Featherstone Briggs, Hamblen, Burrows, Richards and Lady Rose.

Attorneys Christo and Joycelyn Gift are the respondents.

Newsday understands that the Privy Council is expected to rule on the matter within the next month.

Rowley, who was present for the hearing in London, was represented by former attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj SC, Dr Margaret Rose and Robert Strang. Former attorney general Anand Ramlogan SC appeared virtually for the Gifts.

Rowley is contending that he was entitled to purchase the land at Alma Estate based in a 1975 agreement. The land at that time was owned by Frank Latour.

That year, Latour agreed to sell a parcel of land on the estate to Rowley for $300 per acre. The following year, a survey was done which identified the parcel as being 56.5 acres.

Rowley alleged that Latour was dissatisfied with this survey and requested it be done over. But he died before that was done or conveyance took place. His executrix was his daughter, Marcelle Latour.

In 1998, Latour agreed to sell the remaining lands in the estate to Christo and Joycelyn Gift at $5,000 per acre. That agreement excluded the parcel that was to be sold to Rowley.

Although both Rowley, in 1975, and the Gifts, in 1998, paid deposits, no conveyance was completed for either transaction.

However, in 2009, Rowley obtained a survey plan, which, he alleged, addressed the concerns Latour had expressed about the first survey.

The second survey fixed the parcel to be sold to Rowley at 85.6 acres (29.1 acres larger than the first survey). Latour sold the 85.6 acres to Rowley for $300 per acre.

But the Gifts claimed that this sale breached their 1998 agreement and now wants possession of the entire estate, with exception of the 56.5 acres sold to Rowley originally identified in the first survey in 1976.

In 2017, a trial judge dismissed the Gifts' claim. But six years later, in 2023, the Court of Appeal allowed the Gifts' to appeal the decision and granted an order for specific performance (a contractual remedy in which a court orders a party to fulfill their obligations as closely as possible to what was promised in the contract, rather than simply paying damages for failing to do so).

Rowley, who resigned as prime minister on March 16 after some 45 years in public life, is now seeking to overturn the Court of Appeal’s decision through the Privy Council.

In opening statements, Maharaj told the Law Lords the appeal raises the question of whether the majority in the Court of Appeal overstepped the bounds of appellate restraint when it overturned the findings of fact made by the trial judge.

He said in the judgement of the majority, the necessity to overturn the judge’s findings of fact rose from two critical and related propositions.

Maharaj argued the judge did not take into account the material evidence in the form of correspondence in 1980 and 1981 between two defendants for the claim - Latour, who was the first defendant, and Rowley, who was the second defendant

He said if the judge had taken that correspondence properly into account, she could not have made her findings to dismiss the respondents’ case as to the agreement with Latour.

Maharaj said, “I will show that both of those propositions are incorrect because, first, the judge did take the correspondence into account and there is no good reason in my respectful submission to doubt that.

“Second, even taking the effect of the correspondence into account as the judge did, her findings were open to her on the evidence. It follows, in my respectful submission from this, that the majority were wrong to interfere with the findings of fact of the trial judge.

In his submissions, Ramlogan said the case has had a “long and meandering journey.

“The genesis of it is located in an agreement on July 19, 1975, which is evidenced by a receipt whereby (Rowley) made a down payment, as it were, on an undefined parcel of land that was subject to a survey to determine the precise boundaries,” he said.

Ramlogan said after the survey in May 1976, the next major step was on January 23, 2009, “long after that survey was done when this claim was filed from our perspective because the other two surveys were done after the claim was filed.”

He said, “That is important because it means in effect that for a period of 1975 to 2009, a period of some 34 years,(Rowley), whose case is that he had bought the parcel of land subject to a survey, took some 34 years, no doubt with the case filed by (the Gifts), acting as a catalyst for him actually getting the survey done. Mind you, the survey was done in relatively quick order after this claim was filed.”

The respondents’ case, Ramlogan said, is that Rowley had an agreement to buy a parcel of land that was to be defined by a survey.

“That survey was done and that resulted in 56.5 acres.”

He said the receipts from 1975 and 1998 must not be confused.

Ramlogan said his client, Christo Gift, in cross-examination, was “crystal clear” about his side of the story, “that we were told that you were selling a parcel of land which was subject to survey and was in fact surveyed. It was 56.5 acres and the balance belonged to us.

“That was the simple case that he consistently stuck too. In fact, he had said that Mrs Latour had not even told them that Rowley had made a down payment. All she told them was that they had agreed to sell him a portion of land and it had to be subject to survey.”

He said his submission was uncomplicated.

Ramlogan argued that the lapse of time in this matter "spans over three decades and the oral evidence from a human being in circumstances such as that it would be very unsafe and unreliable because memories would have faded and this is precisely why, in a situation like that, if there is contemporaneous documentary evidence, it is going to be of relatively higher probative value as to what transpired."

“So this falls within one of the exceptions which justifies appellate intervention and if it is that the trial judge did not, in fact, weigh in the balance, heavily so, the contemporaneous documentary evidence.