TTFA absent from Court garnishee hearing

This af­ter Tues­day's hear­ing had to be ad­journed be­cause of a no-show by the le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion.

Guardian Me­dia Sports learnt there was al­so no TTFA of­fi­cial at the hear­ing.

Yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion William Wal­lace said his At­tor­ney's non-ap­pear­ance was due to no com­mu­ni­ca­tion reach­ing him for Tues­day's hear­ing.

Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Ramesh Ramd­han said: "Ravi Ra­jku­mar in­di­cat­ed to me that he was not in­formed of this mat­ter yes­ter­day (Tues­day) and he will go to the courts to­day (yes­ter­day) to see what would have hap­pened with re­gards to com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the mat­ter, but his of­fice re­ceived no com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We (TTFA) were not re­quired to be there be­cause this was a mat­ter where we had to be rep­re­sent­ed."

Kendall Walkes, the for­mer TTFA Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor who was fired from his job in 2016 has since sued and won over $5 mil­lion for wrong­ful dis­missal.

How­ev­er, the TTFA's in­abil­i­ty to pay the amount led to Walkes, through his lawyer Melis­sa Keisha Roberts-John, tak­ing out a gar­nishee or­der to freeze the ac­counts of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion on Feb­ru­ary 13, and there­by pre­vent­ing the TTFA the use of the ac­counts to con­duct any of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's busi­ness.

Walkes lawyer ready to ne­go­ti­ate

Walkes has since re­quest­ed a $2.5 mil­lion pay­ment to lift the gar­nishee or­der, which the TTFA made clear, it could not pay.

Roberts-John said the or­der was tak­en out be­cause of poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the part of the TTFA, and she echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments when con­tact­ed, as both par­ties knew about the ap­pli­ca­tion.

"They were served with the ac­tion (ap­pli­ca­tion), so I don't think that the mat­ter took their non-rep­re­sen­ta­tion or non-ap­pear­ance in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. The mat­ter was ad­journed, but not in light of their non-ap­pear­ance. The onus is on you if you want to come and de­fend the ap­pli­ca­tion but if not, a de­ci­sion can be made in your ab­sence. I will stick to my ini­tial state­ment as to why we reached this stage- lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion."

She not­ed: "I have been send­ing in my cor­re­spon­dence to them in Feb­ru­ary, I have got­ten noth­ing in writ­ing with any counter-pro­pos­al, so lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion."

The TTFA's no-show didn't seem to sur­prise Roberts-John, who want­ed the TTFA to know fur­ther, that they're will­ing to ne­go­ti­ate for less than the ask­ing $2.5 mil­lion amount, how­ev­er, she made it clear you can­not ne­go­ti­ate with some­one who is re­luc­tant to do so.

"The claimant Mr Walkes is will­ing to re­solve the is­sue that's why a pro­pos­al was sent out. We are open to dis­cus­sion be­cause we would like to re­solve this mat­ter. We know of the sum and we know the TTFA can­not pay that in a lump sum, so we are mind­ed to have some type of pro­pos­al-plan, pay­ment-plan, some­thing like that, but it goes back to com­mu­ni­ca­tion. If I am reach­ing out but you are not reach­ing out in re­turn, what can I do?"

Wal­lace in his re­sponse de­nied there is any break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the par­ties and said his as­so­ci­a­tion cur­rent­ly does not have a fig­ure to ne­go­ti­ate with. "We said to them that we would come to the ta­ble with an of­fer, we have noth­ing to put for­ward yet. We are the ones try­ing to raise the mon­ey and we are try­ing to come up with a fig­ure, so the ball is in our court at the mo­ment."

Mean­while, dur­ing the hear­ing, the le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of First Cit­i­zens in­formed the court that it would file ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence of its ser­vice fees for the TTFA ac­counts be­fore the next court hear­ing, next Mon­day.

SOURCE: T&T Guardian