“Sedi” Elrington’s Progresso Heights Case Goes to the C.C.J.
Wilfred Elrington
A lawsuit filed against Foreign Minister Wilfred ‘Sedi’ Elrington and his law firm, Pitts and Elrington, will be heard in the Caribbean Court of Justice in the months ahead. The matter involves a real estate company in which Elrington is said to be a shareholder, as well as a legal representative. According to attorney Eamon Courtenay, who represents Progresso Heights Limited, there was a disagreement between Elrington and other shareholders which led to the withholding of sixteen land title documents. Eight of those documents have since been processed; however, his clients have not been returned the titles or any monies from the sale of the properties. Courtenay told reporters this morning that the CCJ has granted leave to hear the case.
Eamon Courtenay
Eamon Courtenay, Attorney for Progresso Heights Ltd.
“This is a case in which the client is Progresso Heights Ltd., which is a company that has a substantial amount of land in the Corozal District and has done a subdivision. The defendant is Pitts and Elrington and Wilfred Elrington personally. It’s a very regrettable case quite frankly and what has happened here is that Mr. Elrington acted as attorney for Progresso Heights and he was also at the same time a shareholder in the company. He and the other shareholders had a falling out and he, on our instructions, held about sixteen title documents that were in process, land that was sold by the company, for which the company took the purchase price, sent the documents to his firm for the documents to be processed. They had a falling out and half of those documents, eight of the sixteen were processed and they are refusing to return the documents, refusing to return the monies to the clients. Both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court ruled that our clients could not succeed because we can’t prove who at Pitts and Elrington actually received the documents or if they received them. We have submitted just now to the CCJ that there was a course of conduct over many years where the documents were sent to Pitts and Elrington and Mr. Elrington himself admitted that Mrs. Elrington was working at the office and processing these documents. And therefore, the inference must be that the money was sent, deposited into Mr. Elrington’s account, the documents were sent and half of them were processed. The inference to be drawn was that in fact it is Pitts and Elrington who received it. I mean, just stop and think about it, if they didn’t receive it then who did? The documents haven’t been returned to my clients so are we to believe that some stranger, some third party got hold of these documents, paid the stamp duty, paid the registration fee, filed the documents in the registry, get title documents in the name of purchasers, not in the name of a third party, in the purchasers and withholding these documents. I mean, I don’t think that that inference is reasonable so we’re going now to the CCJ to ask the CCJ to rule that in fact Pitts and Elrington got the documents and that they’re holding them and we’re asking the court to order that they be returned to our clients.”
The estimated value of the properties in question is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
