FORMER chairman of the Urban Development Corporation (Udecott) Calder Hart has won his complaint that his right to a fair hearing was breached by the commission of inquiry into the construction of the failed Las Alturas housing complex in Morvant.
On Friday, Justices of Appeal Mark Mohammed, Peter Rajkumar and Maria Wilson allowed Hart’s appeal of Justice David Harris’s dismissal of his protests in a ruling in 2020.
In their ruling, the judges said the commission did not follow its own procedures. They said although Hart did not participate in the inquiry by either testifying or providing a witness statement, he was entitled to be treated fairly.
“It is a fundamental requirement of natural justice and procedural fairness that a person be afforded the opportunity to respond to, or defend himself against, proposed adverse findings or criticism rather than being condemned unheard.”
Hart had been invited to give a statement as a former Udecott chairman but did not participate after the commission failed to provide him with documents, including minutes of board meetings from Udecott and various technical reports. He was on the Microsoft Teams virtual platform for Friday’s ruling.
Rajkumar, who delivered the decision, said, “This case does not require consideration of the facts found, evidence led, and decisions arrived at by that commission.
“It is concerned rather with the decision-making process and in particular whether the appellant was entitled to be afforded fundamental fairness by an opportunity to respond to adverse findings that the commission proposed to make against him.”
As a result, the commission’s findings and recommendations only against Hart, contained in five paragraphs of its report, dated August 30, 2016, were quashed and deemed to have been arrived at in breach of the principles of natural justice.
In several of its findings, the commission had said Hart was “clearly the mind and management of Udecott with respect to the project.”
Hart’s contentions were that the adverse findings made against him by commissioners retired judge (now deceased) Mustapha Ibrahim, Dr Myron Wing-Sang Chin and Anthony Farrell, were unfair and illegal at no stage was he alerted by the commission that it could make adverse findings against him.
Harris’s ruling was also faulted by the judges.
In his decision, Harris held that “At the onset, it cannot be in dispute that the commissioners are duty-bound to faithfully, fully, impartially and to the best of their ability discharge the trust and perform the duties devolving upon them as commissioners. “Did they do so? This court holds that they did discharge their duty as prescribed by the terms of reference and indeed the law generally.”
However, Rajkumar said even if the commission’s perception that Hart had been uncooperative, there was no reason for it to dispense with the requirement that it adhere to its own procedures, “especially because of the serious nature of the potential and actual findings and recommendations” against Hart.
Rajkumar also s
