Appeal Court to decide on CLF legal fee dispute

The Court of Ap­peal will have to de­cide whether a law firm or a Ba­hamas-based sub­sidiary of CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) should have ex­clu­sive ac­cess to le­gal costs that the es­tate of for­mer CLF ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Lawrence Duprey was award­ed for a dis­con­tin­ued law­suit against him (Duprey) and oth­er for­mer CLF ex­ec­u­tives, over their al­leged roles in the con­glom­er­ate’s col­lapse.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd (BAICO) filed an ap­peal af­ter High Court Judge Vigel Paul ruled that Cher­sons, which ini­tial­ly rep­re­sent­ed Duprey in the now-dis­con­tin­ued pro­ceed­ings, was en­ti­tled to re­ceive its fees from the le­gal costs to be paid by the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) and CLF sub­sidiary Cli­co, with BAICO hav­ing ac­cess to what re­mains.

In the ap­peal, BAICO is claim­ing that Jus­tice Paul was wrong to find the ex­is­tence of a so­lic­i­tor’s eq­ui­table lien in re­la­tion to Cher­sons and to grant it (Cher­son) eq­ui­table re­lief.