4 weeks ago, 7News told you about Oceana Belize's court challenge to several offshore oil contracts which the Ministry of Natural Resources issued in 2005.
In the last hearing, the Coalition to Save Our Natural Heritage and COLA were granted leave to join Oceana as co-claimants against the Government of Belize.
Today, the Government Crown Counsel, Herbert Panton, brought an application to court to have Justice Legall completely strike out the case.
There were lots of technical points presented in court, so we spoke to Oceana's Vice President, Audrey Matura-Shepherd, to have her explain:
Here's what she told us outside of court:
Audrey Matura-Shepherd, VP - OCEANA
"We are answering to two grounds under which the government is claiming that the whole case should be struck out completely. The two grounds are one that we did not follow procedure to get the matter before the court. They are arguing that what we are seeking is judicial review and we are arguing that we are not seeking judicial review; we are seeking an administrative order. Judicial review is only one form of an administrative order, so obviously from the start of the discussion the judge went straight to that first point. The second point that the government is arguing is that because we are challenging a decision of the government that they are a public authority and therefore the limitation act which is another piece of legislation applies to it. Under the limitation act what they are saying is two things; that we would have had to give 30 days' notice and two; that we would have had to then bring our claim within a year. So the minute we knew that the wrong doing began within a year - we didn't get to reach that point yet simply because what occurred was that the judge wanted to know did the limitation act really apply because if it applied then their arguments would be valid. But if it didn't apply it would then mean that they have no argument, but he fell short of continuing the case simply because one of the cases that we sighted as an authority saying that it does not apply is the case of Froylan Gilharry against the government, which is interestingly is a case that was recently decided by the court of appeal and the reasoning for that decision has not come out yet. That section 56 they are saying that we are technically applying for judicial review and because we didn't follow the proper procedure for judicial review it should be thrown out and we are saying no, we are not applying for judicial review, the due say that we are applying for judicial review is because we applied for an order - we said to the court that if you rule in our favor - one of the orders that we would want to give you is an order called certiorari, certiorari is just a Latin word for saying quashing a decision."
"We are saying if you find that these contracts as we are saying as invalid we are asking you to used your discretion as the court to quash it. They are saying that that is a relief that is given only under judicial review and we are arguing no it's not because since 2005 when we got the new rules a lot has change - that is like a legal battling and technicalities. We feel that we've done our research, we have the authorities and it would be interesting how it plays out."
The next hearing of this matter is scheduled for July 25, when Justice Legall will give his ruling on this strike-out application.
