Supreme Court and Court of Appeal decisions

Catherine Allen wanted her employment dispute with Guardian Life referred by the Minister of Labour & Social Security to the Industrial Disputes Tribunal. The Minister took about 2 years to refer the dispute, and Catherine claimed that it breached her right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time. For Guardian Life's part, she claimed they caused or contributed to the delay and that was a breach of her rights. 

Mikhail was part of the team that successfully argued that private entities, like Guardian Life, are not able to breach the right to a fair hearing. 

Guardian Life Limited successfully brought a claim against its former employee for breaches of her contractual, equitable and fiduciary duties to not disclose confidential information. The employee argued that she did not disclose confidential information and if she did, she did so in the proper course of her employment. After a lengthy trial, the court found that she had made unauthorised disclosures of confidential information which were breaches for which she was culpable.

The court found that in the circumstances, Guardian Life is entitled to compensation which is to be assessed by reference to a hypothetical fee which could have been insisted upon for the release of the employee from her duty of confidentiality and having regard to the nature of the disclosed information. The court therefore directed an assessment of negotiating damages to quantify the amount the employee is to pay the employee.  

In this case, an expert commissioned land surveyor was appointed by the court with the consent of the respective parties. However, when he produced his report, George applied for questions to be asked of the surveyor in writing. The court granted George his request. But, when the questions were given to the surveyor, Mikhail (acting for Bobett) objected and applied to strike out the questions and answers given by the surveyor.

The argument which was accepted by the court was that the majority of the questions asked were not for the purpose of clarification and were therefore impermissible. Questions put the witness must not be for cross-examination purposes.

The court agreed. 

This is a case which touch and concern the entry of default judgment, extension of time to file defence and requests for information. In this case, Mikhail acted for the defendant company, who filed an application for an extension of time to file its defence as well as a request for information which would have assisted in the preparation of the defence. 

While the application was pending, and no answer to the request forthcoming, default judgment was entered against the defendant company. Mikhail successfully argued that the judgment is to be set aside as of right, and that an answer to the request for information should be given before the defendant files a defence. 

Acting for Saed, Mikhail went to trial against James Salmon seeking rental from him for his occupation of his property. James counterclaimed for the court to find that there was a valid agreement for sale between himself and Saed and that agreement for sale was to be performed. Saed claimed that originally the parties had an intention to enter into an agreement for sale of the property to James, but until the agreement was reduced to writing, there was a rental arrangement in place. Money was passed from James to Saed, and Saed gave James the keys to the property. 

There were inconsistent payments of money to Saed, and his attempts to enter into a written agreement with James were unsuccessful, and after a while, James stopped paying money to Saed. The court ordered the payment of USD$318,000.00 with interest of 1.5% p.a. to Saed which represents rent for the period of occupation, as well as the sum of USD$130,350.00 as the amount to pay to purchase the property from Saed. 

Failure to pay all the sums awarded by the court in the time ordered so to do, will result in Saed getting the property returned to him. 

In this case, Mikhail H. R. Williams acted for the defendants who the claimants alleged committed acts of civil fraud to obtain a registered title to certain property. They were all family. 

Mikhail H. R. Williams was able to secure judgment for the defendants without ever having to go to trial. 

Mikhail H. R. Williams acted for the defendant Earnest Norris in this case where the claimant was seeking to remove him from certain property which they purchased from third parties. Earnest's argument was that he was in possession of the property for several years, and so has his father. Mikhail H. R. Williams therefore argued that Earnest was entitled to rely on not only his own possession of the property, but also the time that his father had been in possession of the same property for the purposes of arguing adverse possession. This argument was enough to prevent the claimant from getting judgment against Earnest for failing to file a defence within the time prescribed to do so. 

Earnest's defence argued by Mikhail H. R. Williams showed a real prospect of successfully defending the claim. The court therefore granted him an extension of time to file the defence. 

Mikhail H. R. Williams acted for the defendant, Winthrop Rochester. This was a case involving ownership of a roadway which ran through Winthrop's land, and led to the entrance of the claimant's property. She argued that she owned the road, or, that the roadway was an easement by necessity or by prescription. 

The judge found that Violet had been sufficiently discredited at the trial, and that there was no easement by necessity since there were alternative methods of accessing her property. 

This is a matter where Mikhail H. R. Williams represented Lloyd and Cedric Gayle in the court of appeal. They were successful on a point of law regarding the legal interpretation of a will. Sylvia was the executor under that will who had a particular interpretation as to a certain provision. Lloyd and Cedric were of a different mind. The Supreme Court agreed with Lloyd and Cedric's interpretation. Sylvia appealed. 

The Court of Appeal agreed with Mikhail H. R. Williams that the interpretation provided by the Supreme Court could not be disturbed and the arguments put forward for Sylvia were fallible. 

Mikhail represented the claimant, Michael Johnson, who sued the defendant who is his neighbour. She built a lovely gazebo and a nice boundary wall and gate to her property. As lovely as these structures were, they were  1100 sq feet or 354.73 sq meters onto Michael's land. Fredrica responded to the claim by saying she did not know she built onto Michael's land, and if she did, it was not her fault, it was her contractors' fault. She also advanced the argument that the structures were there for over 12 years and she therefore could not be told to remove from the property. 

Although efforts were made to, the case could not be settled with anything other than trial. Various legal arguments coupled with vigorous cross-examination of witnesses and critical examination of documents and exhibits and ultimately, the court accepted the position of Michael Johnson. The defendant was ordered to demolish the offending structures which encroached onto Michael's land. 

This is the unfortunate case where the claimant, who was a minor student at the time, lost sight in her left eye due to a classroom incident. She was represented by Mikhail. Roxanne sued her classmate, her classroom teacher, the principal (who was also the classmate's parent), the board of management of the school, the ministry of education and the attorney general of Jamaica. 

The court held that Roxanne was able to recover damages for the loss of her sight against her classmate, but found that the teachers, board and ministry were not negligent because of the actions of the student.