13 weeks ago, we told you Stakebank Enterprise Limited had a technical failure in the Supreme Court. They were challenging the government's decision to give a competing developer the environmental permissions necessary to start building their mega cruise port facility. Because their attorneys didn't file the documents in time, however, the presiding judge struck it out of court.
As we told you, Stakebank filed an application for judicial review against the Government of Belize. They insisted to the court that the National National Environmental Appraisal Committee and the Department of Environment made a bad decision when they gave the necessary environmental approval for Port of Magical Belize to proceed to the next phase of development.
That legal battle was gearing up to be a major fight over the Belize DISTRICT'S Cruise Tourism future. So, the other developers: Portico Enterprises, the company that has proposed the Port of Magical Belize, and Waterloo Investment Holdings Limited, which wants to upgrade the Port of Belize Limited to accommodate cruise tourism, joined that case as interested parties.
When the case progressed, however, Assistant Solicitor General Samantha-Matute-Tucker was able to successfully convince Justice Lisa Shoman that the litigants failed to meet the August 10, 2021 deadline for the filing of important court documents. They say that the claimant didn't do so until 3 days later, which meant that their case was out of time, and not properly before the court.
A few weeks ago, Stakebank's attorneys went back before Justice Shoman to obtain permission to appeal her strike-out decision. After listening to the arguments from the attorneys in the case, the judge decided today that she will not grant them permission to appeal.
We spoke via zoom this evening with the attorney for the interested parties, and here's how he explained the outcome:
Hector Guerra - Attorney For The Interested Parties
"Today was the hearing of an application by Stakebank, seeking permission to bring an appeal against a judgment given by Justice Lisa Shoman, in which she struck Stakebank's claim for failing to have filed the claim within the required 14-day period, for bringing judicial review proceedings. So the best way to understand this is if it's perhaps the background is provided. So back in July last year, Stakebank obtained leave to bring judicial review proceedings. The claim was, in essence, to challenge the decision of the Department of Environment, which granted Portico Enterprises an environmental compliance plan a part of that permission to bring the claim required Stakebank to file a claim within 14 days. The evidence before the court showed that the claim was not so filed. As a result, ourselves, along with the government, filed applications in which we sought to have Stakebank's claim struck because it did not comply with that rule. The applications were successful. The amounts claim was struck out. Consequently, the rules require that if you want the rules that govern the court require that if you want to appeal that ruling, you have to first be granted permission to do so, for obvious reasons. The court is trying to avoid busybodies, etcetera. So today was set for the hearing of that application, seeking permission and one of the thresholds that the applicant had to satisfy was that there was a realistic prospect of success. Stake Bank was not able to satisfy the court of that and so that, among other reasons, caused its application to be dismissed."
Stakebank still has an option to appeal the judge's decision from today. We note that they government was capably and successfully represented by one of those same Crown Counsels whom the Prime Minister offhandedly disparaged last week.
