Morvant firm threatens to sue energy companies in solar farm land dispute

A com­pa­ny has threat­ened to sue an un­der-con­struc­tion so­lar farm in cen­tral Trinidad for al­leged­ly en­croach­ing on a par­cel of land it has an in­ter­est in.

Mor­vant Build­ing and Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed made the threat in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent by its lawyer, Pe­ter Tay­lor, to the Brechin Cas­tle So­lar Farm, yes­ter­day.

The le­gal cor­re­spon­dence was al­so sent to the chair­man of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), and the man­ag­ing di­rec­tors of bp Al­ter­na­tive En­er­gy T&T (bpATT) and Shell Re­new­ables Caribbean (Shell), who part­nered to de­vel­op the project that is tout­ed to be­come the largest of its kind in the Caribbean once com­plete.

In the let­ter, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Tay­lor claimed that his client’s 37-acre plot falls with­in the 238- hectare site that is be­ing de­vel­oped in­to the so­lar farm.

Tay­lor claimed the land was orig­i­nal­ly owned by Charles Placide and trans­ferred to Wil­helmi­na Placide af­ter he died in 1916. He ad­mit­ted that in 1955, Wil­helmi­na en­tered in­to a 35-year oil min­ing lease agree­ment with a com­pa­ny. Three years lat­er, she sold the land to Gar­net Has­matali.

Tay­lor claimed the lease ex­pired in 1991 but was re­newed by im­pli­ca­tion through the con­duct of the par­ties. He claimed that when Has­matali died in 1973, the land passed to his wid­ow, Cyn­thia.

She al­leged­ly trans­ferred the land to the com­pa­ny and ap­plied for it to be de­clared the ben­e­fi­cial own­er in 2012.

“The sub­ject ar­eas up­on which you have tres­passed and up­on which your fur­ther tres­pass is im­mi­nent, falls with­in the con­sol­i­dat­ed lands. Our client has demon­stra­bly bet­ter and su­pe­ri­or ti­tle to the sub­ject lands,” he said.

Tay­lor called on the so­lar farm and its in­vestors to pro­vide ev­i­dence of their claims to the land.

Tay­lor did not give the com­pa­ny a dead­line to re­spond to the le­gal threat but claimed his client would file a law­suit and seek in­junc­tive re­lief if it did not re­ceive a favourable re­sponse with­in a rea­son­able time.

Once com­plet­ed, the farm is ex­pect­ed to con­tribute eight per cent to T&T’s to­tal pow­er-gen­er­a­tion ca­pac­i­ty by pro­vid­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 31,500 homes with clean and re­new­able en­er­gy an­nu­al­ly.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/morvant-firm-threatens-to-sue-energy-companies-in-solar-farm-land-dispute-6.2.2388174.018de54050