We're used to reporting on cases of the government of Belize losing some million dollar judgements in the High Courts - especially in land compensation cases. But tonight they have a big victory to report -and the Ministry of Natural Resources hopes it is a precedent setter.
It's one of those cases of duplication of title - one piece of crown land is sold to two different owners. In that case, government then has to compensate the second land owner - but not with a refund of the purchase price, they have to do so at market value rates - which can be 100, or 1,000 times the purchase price. And taxpayers are the ones left holding that very expensive bag.
That's what happened with a case that recently went to the court of appeal. The landowners paid the government a paltry $2,870 dollars for the land, and asked for 8.9 million dollars in compensation when it went to court. The High Court granted them a 2 million dollar compensation. But, that wasn't enough and they went to the court of appeal asking for that 8 million dollars - an almost 300,000 percent increase.
Well, on Friday the Court of Appeal rejected that and told the government to just refund the owners the original purchase price of $2,870 dollars.
The case goes back to 200 when the Government inadvertently sold 14.76 acres of land on Cats Caye in the Stann Creek District to Rudolph Ramirez, who, in turn, sold it to Julius Zabaneh. Turns out that three years earlier, the government had sold the same land to someone else.
In 2021, Ramirez and Zabaneh (the claimants) sued the Government for $8,900,000 in compensation as the market value. The High Court awarded compensation, but in the amount of 2.1 million.
Zabaneh and Ramirez didn't feel satisfied and they appealed the award saying that the 2.1 million dollars award was insufficient.
The Government successfully argued that the claimants knew that when the title was reissued in 2019, the Government did not own the land and therefore this should bar them from receiving any compensation.
The Court of Appeal agreed, explaining, quote:
"For the grant of land which was clearly no longer national land and thus not in the Minister's power to convey, the State (and by extension, taxpayers of Belize) would be liable to repay a party who knew of the true state of affairs, millions of dollars in damages. In my opinion, no procedural rule could justify or should be allowed to enable such a perverse outcome." [93]
An excited press release from government says, quote "With this decision, the Government, on behalf of the people of Belize, can now push back and fight these types of claims with vigour."
Government was represented by Senior Counsel Eamon Courtenay and Assistant Solicitor General Samantha Matute. The claimants were represented by William A Lindo.
