Court of Appeal Rejects Key Bid in Stake Bank Cruise Port Dispute

A major legal challenge surrounding the proposed Stake Bank cruise port development has encountered a setback, after the Court of Appeal of Belize this week rejected key applications brought by businessman Michael Feinstein.  In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel dismissed Feinstein’s attempt to introduce what he described as newly discovered evidence into his ongoing appeal and also refused his request to compel the Government to disclose additional documents related to the case.  At the centre of the dispute is the Government’s compulsory acquisition of approximately 23.4 acres of Feinstein’s land near Stake Bank Island for the development of a cruise port project.  Feinstein had sought to rely on a June 2024 report commissioned by the Ministry of Tourism and Diaspora Relations, which compared alternative cruise port sites, including the Port of Magical Belize and the Port of Belize, and reportedly described the Stake Bank project as “defunct.” Through his attorney, King’s Counsel Richard Salter, Feinstein argued that the report undermined the Government’s claim that the land acquisition was in the public interest.  He further applied for disclosure of several categories of documents, including Cabinet records and inter-ministerial communications leading up to the acquisition.  However, delivering the ruling, Chief Justice Louise Esther Blenman applied the well-established legal test from the case of Ladd v Marshall, which governs the admission of fresh evidence on appeal.  The Court found that Feinstein failed to meet the first requirement, that the evidence could not have been obtained with reasonable diligence before the original trial. The judgment noted that Feinstein was already aware that Government had been considering alternative cruise port proposals and could have pursued those documents during earlier proceedings.  Chief Justice Blenman described the omission as a deliberate litigation choice, stating that the rules governing fresh evidence are not intended to give a losing party “a second bite at the proverbial cherry.”  On the second requirement, whether the report would have influenced the outcome, the Court was also not persuaded. It concluded that even with the report, the trial court’s findings would likely have remained unchanged, noting that the Stake Bank project was the only proposal at the time with regulatory approvals, financing, and equipment already in place.  Having failed to satisfy key elements of the test, the application to admit the new evidence was dismissed, along with the request for additional disclosure.  Despite the ruling, the matter is far from over. The substantive appeal, which will determine whether the Government’s acquisition of Feinstein’s land was constitutional, is still pending before the Court of Appeal.