Privy Council rules in favor of former PM Keith Rowley in Tobago land dispute

Trinidad and Tobago’s former Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley has secured a decisive legal victory at the Privy Council in a decades-long dispute over the sale of a parcel of land on the Alma Estate in Mason Hall, Tobago.

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In a ruling handed down on Tuesday, the UK-based Privy Council overturned a 2023 judgment by the Trinidad and Tobago Court of Appeal and reinstated the original 2017 High Court decision, which had favoured Rowley. The country’s final appellate court found that the Court of Appeal wrongly interfered with the trial judge’s findings of fact.

The case revolved around an agreement made in 1975 between Rowley and landowner Frank Latour, who agreed to sell him land on the Alma Estate at TT$300 per acre. A 1976 survey identified the parcel as 56.5 acres. Dissatisfied with the survey, Latour reportedly requested a resurvey but died before it could be completed or a formal conveyance made.

Years later, in 1998, Latour’s daughter and executrix, Marcelle Latour, agreed to sell the remainder of the estate to Christo and Jocelyn Gift for TT$5,000 per acre. The sale excluded the land promised to Rowley. Although both parties paid deposits, neither transaction was finalized at that point.

In 2009, Rowley commissioned a new survey that adjusted his parcel to 85.6 acres — 29.1 acres more than the initial survey. That land was eventually sold to him by Marcelle Latour, triggering a legal challenge from the Gifts, who claimed the sale breached their agreement. They sought specific performance based on the original 56.5-acre survey.

A High Court judge dismissed the Gifts’ claim in 2017, but a divided Court of Appeal later reversed that decision, ruling in their favour. On appeal, the Privy Council found that the appellate majority had overstepped by reassessing the facts rather than deferring to the trial judge’s original conclusions.

In delivering the ruling, Lord Andrew Burrows criticised the Court of Appeal majority for misapplying the legal standards that limit appellate intervention in fact-based findings. The ruling also highlighted how prominently the original evidence — including 1980 and 1981 correspondence — featured in the trial proceedings and cross-examinations, rejecting the notion that the trial judge had failed to weigh it properly.

The Privy Council acknowledged arguments made by the Gifts’ attorney, former attorney general Anand Ramlogan, SC, who contended that documentary evidence should have outweighed witness memory. However, the panel concluded that the trial judge was best placed to assess credibility and had not erred in doing so.

Rowley’s legal team, led by another former attorney general, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, SC, successfully argued that the Court of Appeal had misinterpreted the facts and disregarded the judge’s reasoning without sufficient basis.

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The ruling also noted that while Rowley’s delay in completing the sale and organizing a new survey could be questioned, he had been in possession of the land since the 1970s and may not have had strong motivation to formalize the transaction earlier.

With the Privy Council’s ruling, Rowley’s ownership of the 85.6-acre parcel is now legally affirmed, bringing an end to the dispute nearly five decades after the initial agreement was made.