The High Court is set to rule on a garnishee order against the T&T Football Association (TTFA) on Monday at the Hall of Justice, Port-of-Spain.
This after Tuesday's hearing had to be adjourned because of a no-show by the legal representative of the embattled football association.
Guardian Media Sports learnt there was also no TTFA official at the hearing.
Yesterday, president of the football association William Wallace said his Attorney's non-appearance was due to no communication reaching him for Tuesday's hearing.
General Secretary Ramesh Ramdhan said: "Ravi Rajkumar indicated to me that he was not informed of this matter yesterday (Tuesday) and he will go to the courts today (yesterday) to see what would have happened with regards to communications for the matter, but his office received no communication. We (TTFA) were not required to be there because this was a matter where we had to be represented."
Kendall Walkes, the former TTFA Technical Director who was fired from his job in 2016 has since sued and won over $5 million for wrongful dismissal.
However, the TTFA's inability to pay the amount led to Walkes, through his lawyer Melissa Keisha Roberts-John, taking out a garnishee order to freeze the accounts of the football association on February 13, and thereby preventing the TTFA the use of the accounts to conduct any of the organisation's business.
Walkes lawyer ready to negotiate
Walkes has since requested a $2.5 million payment to lift the garnishee order, which the TTFA made clear, it could not pay.
Roberts-John said the order was taken out because of poor communication on the part of the TTFA, and she echoed similar sentiments when contacted, as both parties knew about the application.
"They were served with the action (application), so I don't think that the matter took their non-representation or non-appearance into consideration. The matter was adjourned, but not in light of their non-appearance. The onus is on you if you want to come and defend the application but if not, a decision can be made in your absence. I will stick to my initial statement as to why we reached this stage- lack of communication."
She noted: "I have been sending in my correspondence to them in February, I have gotten nothing in writing with any counter-proposal, so lack of communication."
The TTFA's no-show didn't seem to surprise Roberts-John, who wanted the TTFA to know further, that they're willing to negotiate for less than the asking $2.5 million amount, however, she made it clear you cannot negotiate with someone who is reluctant to do so.
"The claimant Mr Walkes is willing to resolve the issue that's why a proposal was sent out. We are open to discussion because we would like to resolve this matter. We know of the sum and we know the TTFA cannot pay that in a lump sum, so we are minded to have some type of proposal-plan, payment-plan, something like that, but it goes back to communication. If I am reaching out but you are not reaching out in return, what can I do?"
Wallace in his response denied there is any breakdown in communication between the parties and said his association currently does not have a figure to negotiate with. "We said to them that we would come to the table with an offer, we have nothing to put forward yet. We are the ones trying to raise the money and we are trying to come up with a figure, so the ball is in our court at the moment."
Meanwhile, during the hearing, the legal representatives of First Citizens informed the court that it would file additional evidence of its service fees for the TTFA accounts before the next court hearing, next Monday.
SOURCE: T&T Guardian