SpeedNet Vs P.U.C. at C.C.J.

Eamon Courtenay

Turning to the Caribbean Court of Justice where SpeedNet is appealing a decision from the Belize Court of Appeal on the matter of provisional licenses. Now, the matter has been languishing before the courts for years and has gone through the local courts all the way to the C.C.J.  The Public Utilities Commission is claiming that SpeedNet has failed to pay fees owed since 2010 for spectrum. SpeedNet won the first round on the basis that the P.U.C. did not have the authority to issue the temporary licenses.  But on appeal, the court ruled in favour of the Commission, finding that it did have the authority.  SpeedNet took the matter to the C.C.J., but before the proceedings got underway today, attorney for SpeedNet, Senior Counsel Eamon Courtenay filed an application for the respondent to be sanctioned for breaking the rules of the court.

Eamon Courtenay, Attorney for SpeedNet

“They did not respond to our submissions at all. They just filed something in order to make the deadline. We took that point and now your honour, what we have is a fifty-one-page response to our case supported by twenty-three authorities, which we have not had an opportunity to read. So that this document that was supposedly their submissions is not responsive. Now they are responding to the case. Had they put that in on the thirtieth, then my reply would not have been only five pages, it would have responded substantively to what my learned friends now seek to advance.”

Fred Lumor

Fred Lumor, Attorney for P.U.C.

“Since counsel took those issues, we decided that if those are going to be an issue, which the court will require us to address in order to reach a decision, then we should address them. Your honours also the technical issues concerning the application taken before the Court of Appeal where we say the declaration sought and the facts in the declaration are not factually correct.”

Voice of: Justice of the Caribbean Court of Justice

“But did you submit to the Court of Appeal or to the trial judge that the remedy was not available because SpeedNet was not an adversed party? there was another part that was adversely affected.”

Adrian Saunders

Fred Lumor

“Not in those words.”

Voice of: Justice of the Caribbean Court of Justice

“Yeah, but you can’t raise them here for the first time Mister Lumor.”

Fred Lumor

“Well there is the issue decided by the trial judge. He used the word having substantial interest. The rules go back beyond that to say when you say you have substantial interest, they break it down to include whether the person is adversely affected. And that point was taken by the trial judge and opine was made on it.”

Voice of: Justice of the Caribbean Court of Justice

“But if you had taken that point, is the effect of your submission that they have no locus standi because these are JR proceedings. Isn’t that the point you’re making?”

Fred Lumor

“Yes.”

Voice of: Justice of the Caribbean Court of Justice

“So that that is a preliminary point.”

Justice Adrian Saunders, Caribbean Court of Justice

“Mister Lumor. At some point in our rules we will need to address this issue of speaking notes because it can’t be right that we can give directions for written submissions and after those submissions have been put in, the day before the trial someone presents a fifty-one-page document and calls it a speaking note. It is a document that goes completely outside what is in the written submissions. This is in effect a new set of written submissions and I agree with Mister Courtenay that it is a kind of ambush—not a kind of, it is an ambush because you are asking not just him, but the court because we prepared before the day of the hearing. You are asking us now to have to read these new cases and to consider new grounds or points on which to determine the merits of this case. This is something that we can’t support this at all. As to the point which really is a point in limine, we will not allow you to raise that point at all.”