CCJ restores Order requiring GGMC to grant quarry license to Diamond

The Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) has dismissed the appeal by the Commissioner of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (CGMC) and ordered it to grant a quarry license to the Diamond Quarry for which the company had applied since 2014.

In addition, CGMC was also required to pay Diamond’s legal fees.

On March 28, 2014, Diamond applied to the GGMC for a quarry license for 848 acres of land in the interior of Guyana known as ‘Monkey Jump’.

Diamond had done the research to ensure the land was not legally held nor applied for by anyone. But on September 15, 2014, GGMC issued a cease-work order against Baracara Quarries Inc. (‘Baracara’), because it was occupying a portion of Monkey Jump that Diamond had applied for. GGMC then published a Notice of Intention in the Official Gazette to grant a quarry license to Diamond to which no one objected.

GGMC assured Diamond that it would be granted the license as soon as all the statutory documentation was submitted and verified. These documents were submitted and GGMC told Diamond that its application had been ‘favorably considered.’

However, despite these assurances, GGMC, at a meeting on February 10, 2015, stated that many years earlier, Baracara had applied for the same land for which Diamond had applied, and the land would be divided between the two quarry companies.

Diamond took the matter to the High Court alleging that GGMC’s decision to subdivide the land was grossly unfair and based on favoritism. The court agreed and ordered GGMC to quash the decision to subdivide the land; grant the license to Diamond; and not grant a license to the land to anyone else.

GGMC appealed the ruling, and the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and affirmed the orders of the High Court except that it sent Diamond’s application back to be considered by the GGMC. Baracara did not appeal this decision, but GGMC asked the CCJ to reverse the Court of Appeal.

In its judgment, the CCJ, the country’s highest court, found that the land for which Diamond had applied had not been applied for by anyone else, but that GGMC had nonetheless decided to subdivide the land between Diamond and Baracara.

The five-member CCJ panel of judges headed by President Justice Adrian Saunders, considered that this was unfair and unlawful because the GGMC had created a legitimate expectation that it would grant the license to Diamond and had not presented any compelling public interest for not doing so.

In the circumstances, the court considered that it was appropriate to restore the order of the High Court and to require the GGMC to issue the quarry license to Diamond. The GGMC was also required to pay the costs of the appeal.

CMC/