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CI Times Weekly | Current Issue 254 | 09 June 2008

Landowner opposes Taakoka Villas application for reinstatement

Taakoka Villas Ltd has applied to the High Court to be reinstated on to the companies register after having been struck off the register in2006.
The company are represented by NZ based counsel, Brett Morley but the application is opposed by Mrs Ruth Tupangaia, represented legal counsel, Tevita Vakalalabure.
Morley gave a brief history of the unhappy relations between the company and Mrs Tupangaia who has 50% ownership of the land in Muri and was originally one of the shareholders in the Villas.
However, the parties fell out and have involved in a series of legal disputes including a High Court hearing with the landowner applying for the forfeiture of lease for rentals in arrears and lost, and appealed to the Court of Appeal but lost, and then appealed against the costs judgment that was also lost, followed by an appeal to the Privy Council that was eventually abandoned in April 2008. In addition, the parties have been involved in ‘without prejudice’ negotiations regarding payment of court costs that broke down and the company ‘reluctantly’ took her to court in NZ after which the landowner was declared bankrupt.
The company was seeking a ‘straightforward application for reinstatement’ and any other disputes between the parties were for ‘another forum’ and ought not be brought up at these particular proceedings. He said the case also raised issues of res judicata and issue estoppel because the parties are the self same parties involved self same issues and the previous judgments are effective and conclusive.
Vakalalabure for the landowner denied this was so, saying the previous hearing before Justice Nicholson ‘did not touch on the issue that is before the court today.’
The application is anything but ‘straightforward’ because the company has had its status as a foreign enterprise revoked in 2004 and then in 2006 the company was also been struck off the companies register for the Cook Islands. Vakalalabure submitted that because of these events, the ‘door is closed’ and the company will need to go back to the Foreign Investment Board to re-apply for authority to operate in the Cook Islands.
He said the company needed to have that authority first under the terms of the DIB Act before they were eligible to apply for re-registration on the company register. Counsel produced excerpts from Hansard taken during the passage of the Bill through Parliament as an aid to interpretation of the provisions of the DIB Act.
Morley argued that this was a rather ‘strained’ interpretation of the legislation adding that there was ‘no public disadvantage’ to the reinstatement but there were ‘private disadvantages’ to his clients and to creditors to the company.
He also questioned the authenticity of the Hansard report implying that it was not transcribed by Parliamentary staff but by a person who acts for the landowner. However, Vakalalabure told the court that the agent had merely copied from the typewritten copies from Parliament after searching the archived files at Parliament.
The decision has been reserved and Justice Grice has invited counsels to put any application for costs by way of written submissions.

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