Lawyers castigate B.T.L. board for ignoring injunction
Tonight there are serious questions being raised about the rule of law in Belize and respect for the judiciary at the highest levels of business and government. Those doubts have been prompted by what appears to be a case of wilful contempt of the Supreme Court by the board of the directors of Belize Telecommunications Limited. The company had planned to hold its annual general meeting last night at the Belize Biltmore Plaza. But following a ruling a week and a half ago by the Supreme Court that Jeffrey Prosser had been illegally deprived of his control of the company, late Monday morning, Prosser’s local lawyer Lionel Welch filed for an injunction to prevent the holding of the A.G.M. Around four yesterday afternoon, Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh granted the motion. That should have ended the matter, but when the court bailiff sought to deliver the injunction at the Biltmore Plaza he was barred from the meeting room by B.T.L. security guards and could not physically serve the board with the legal document. It’s a technicality that will no doubt spawn a host of lawsuits and perhaps contempt citations but it’s also created uproar in the legal community as two senior attorneys: Rodwell Williams, identified to shareholders as the board’s legal advisor, and Phillip Zuniga, a B.T.L. director, are tonight being accused of deliberately ignoring the court order. One of the people pointing fingers is Senior Counsel Lois Young-Barrow, who claims that not only did she verbally inform Chairman of the board, Keith Arnold, of the injunction, she personally gave him the document.
Senior Counsel Lois Young Barrow, Attorney at Law
?I said Mr. Chairman, are you aware that there is an injunction to stop this meeting? And he said, Oh no I?ve been in meetings all day. We?ve been in meetings all day. We don?t know. We haven?t been served with anything. I said I think you should know that the Chief Justice issued an injunction this afternoon to stop this meeting and he said, I don?t know anything about it. And then Mr. Vasquez, who represents Channel Seven, said, I think you should know that the media were present when they injunction issued and then the Chairman, Keith Arnold got smart, he said, oh, an injunction was issued against the media? Then Mr. Vasquez said, come on don?t make fun of this. This is something serious. The media was present when an injunction was issued, you know exactly what I was saying and he said, Keith Arnold said, I am well aware how serious an injunction is but we weren?t served with anything so we will proceed.?
?I went downstairs and I found the bailiff. I didn?t go down to see the bailiff, I went down to the restroom, saw the bailiff and said, what?s going on? And he said, well I have this injunction here and I can?t get upstairs. I said, let me see what you have here. He showed it to me and I said give it me, I?ll take it up. And I took it up and brought it to the attention of the Chairman and he ignored me totally, which is fine. So I said okay here it is, put it on the podium. He ignored it and continued he said, let?s go on to the other item to the agenda. I will call on Mr. Boyce to give his report. What kind of message that sends to everybody else? That these gentlemen in their neck ties up there can ignore an order of the court, dance around a technicality about how the corporate headquarters weren?t served when they knew that there was such an order. All they had to do was to adjourn the meeting, get a copy of the order, if they didn?t like it, send their lawyer to court the following day and get it set aside. Simple. Work the process like everybody else has to work the process.?
Senior Counsel Fred Lumor, Attorney at Law
?Such an act is an appalling and outrageous slap in the face of a court order and ought not to be accepted by anybody in an orderly society. If the facts are indeed true, those involved have my commiseration because their mea cuplas are sky high when they appear before the courts. I anticipate if the facts are true, their legal advisors will ask them to approach the courts with contrite hearts, that?s all I can say.?
Janelle Chanona
?What do you think this does for the perception of the administration of justice in Belize??
Senior Counsel Fred Lumor
?It gives a wrong signal to the public. That anybody can choose to obey a court order given the circumstances in which he finds himself. Once the court makes an order, whether the judgment is right or wrong you are bound to obey it until the same court sets the judgment aside or the judgment is overturned on appeal. Until such time you are bound by the order or judgment and you ought to obey it.?
Michel Chebat Jr., President, Belize Bar Association
?If any person in the society is allowed to disrespect a court order, then you will find that every one will feel that they too can disrespect a court order. It is my own opinion that we will then be reduced into a state of anarchy. So that when an order is made by the court, it must be respected regardless of who you are. I think if there is one lesson that ought to be learnt from this is certainly that we cannot disrespect the court. I think that the court forms the basis of any democracy and it is really the last resort that we have to have some sort of justice in this country.?
Tonight we understand that Welch spent most of today preparing affidavits from Young-Barrow, the court bailiff and others to support contempt of court proceedings expected to be initiated against the directors of the B.T.L. board later this week. Our attempts to solicit comment from Phillip Zuniga, Phillip Osbourne, Rodwell Williams and B.T.L. executive committee chairman Dean Boyce were unsuccessful. As to what happens next, matters could be greatly complicated if B.T.L. sends out dividends and issues scrip shares, as decided at last night’s meeting. Those actions are likely to be declared invalid … but once the cheques are cashed, how do you get the money back?
