Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
THERE is a row amongst the lawyers in the firm which represented the beneficiaries in the Air Jamaica pension fund, and the trustees have asked the Court of Appeal to intervene.
Phillip Forrest, one of the former partners in the law firm Clinton Hart and Company, is contending that he is entitled to 25 per cent of the legal costs. He sued the trustees but did not join the law firm or its partners in the suit.
Justice Basil Reid after hearing submissions in a summons filed by Mr. Forrest in January this year, granted an order that Mr. Forrest was entitled to 25 per cent of the legal fees.
The Government announced last week that it had paid the trustees $700 million of the $1.4 billion which the former Air Jamaica workers said they were entitled to from the surplus in the pension fund.
CIBC Trust and Merchant Bank and former Air Jamaica workers Joy Charlton and Ian Blair who are the trustees, have filed an appeal against Justice Reid's order.
On Wednesday the trustees applied to the Court of Appeal for a stay of execution of Justice Reid's order. The trustees made the application on the basis that they had a cheque from the Government and wanted to separate the fees for the lawyers from the money belonging to the beneficiaries.
Justice Algernon Smith after hearing submissions in chambers from attorney Samuel Harrison of the law firm Dunn, Cox, Orrett, and Ashenheim which represented the trustees, granted a 14-day stay of Justice Reid's order. The application was made ex parte.
The judge also ordered that for the next 14 days the fees payable to Mr. Forrest must be placed in an account and held by the trustees in the names of Mr. Forrest, Paul Hanna, Vincent Chen, Patrick Foster and Richard Ayoub.
Following the filing of the appeal, the partners in the law firm Clinton Hart and Co. have intervened in the appeal on the ground that they should have been parties to the suit which Mr. Forrest filed against the trustees. They said the original summons filed by Mr. Forrest did not make them parties to the suit and their input was vital to the outcome of the court's determination.
They are contending that it was agreed by Messrs. Hanna, Forrest, Foster and Ayoub that the fees woud be applied towards the liabilities of the firm which expired on August 14, 1998 when Vincent Chen, one of the partners resigned from the firm. They are contending further that it was agreed that if they won the Air Jamaica case, they would assign the fees for the benefit of creditors of the firm and seek an indemnity thereafter from other partners who were allegedly forced to leave. Vincent Chen was also granted leave to intervene in the appeal.
Justice Smith after hearing submissions on Tuesday, granted the order for the partners to be intervenors to the appeal. The partners are also contending that it now appeared to them that based on the order obtained in the suit that Mr. Forrest did not intend to apply the monies to meet the liabilities. They claimed that enquiries made of him subsequent to the order made as to whether or not he intended to do so have failed to elicit any response from him.
The partners contend that Mr. Forrest and other partners at various periods of time are faced with substantial liabilities arising from misappropriation of monies from the law firm for which they have instituted legal proceedings for the purpose of recovering such sum.
