A New York appeals court has upheld Sarkis Izmirlian's $1.642bn damages award for fraud and breach of contract by CCA over the original Baha Mar project's failure. In a unanimous decision, it completely rejected all CCA's grounds of appeal.

In November last year, Justice Andrew Borrok had awarded Izmirlian, Baha Mar's original developer, the full value of his lost investment plus more than a decade’s worth of pre-judgment interest that will likely equal or exceed his $845m equity contribution to the development.

He found that Mr Izmirlian’s fraud claim against CCA was “established beyond doubt” as the contractor “knowingly and falsely” promised it would meet the revised March 27, 2015, opening date for Baha Mar while concealing from the developer this was unlikely to be achieved.

In January this year, CSCEC Bahamas Ltd. (CSCECB), CCA Bahamas Ltd. (CCAB), and CCA Construction, Inc (CCA) filed the opening brief in their appeal of the trial court’s decision with the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court seeking the reversal of what they called a “deeply flawed decision”.

At the time, a CCA spokesman said: "As our appeal makes clear, the trial court disregarded black-letter New York law and ignored indisputable evidence that BMLP’s gross mismanagement, hundreds of millions of dollars in overspending and disastrous unilateral decision to put BML in bankruptcy drove the Baha Mar project into the ground, leaving a rash of unpaid debts to local subcontractors, vendors and the Bahamian government and ultimately resulting in BML’s liquidation by the Bahamian Supreme Court.

“The fact that CCA Bahamas completed 97 percent of the project by the agreed deadline evidenced its good faith. The judgment suffers from numerous, significant legal errors and should be reversed in its entirety, as we believe it will be.”

However, that appeal has now been completely rejected.