By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Freeport-based shipping agent yesterday failed in its bid to have its former general manager and his wife sent to prison over a dispute that involves the port services contract for Carnival’s $600m project.

Justice Constance Delancy dismissed the attempt by BMLS Ltd, known as Bahamas Maritime and Logistics Services, to have Philip Pinder and his wife, Keldra, committed to prison and jailed for allegedly breaching an interim injunction imposed by the Supreme Court.

And she also rejected the application by BMLS to issue “a writ of sequestration” against Lighthouse Maritime and Logistics Services, the start-up shipping agency business founded by Mr Pinder. However, Justice Delancy, noting that neither Mrs Pinder nor Lighthouse are parties to the dispute, found that no evidence was provided to support the “breach of injunction” claim made against them.

BMLS Ltd had also alleged Mr Pinder made “false statements” in an affidavit, justfying his committal to prison. However, Justice Delancy ruled she was “not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the Defendant and Mrs Pinder committed any contempt of court” while there was “no basis” to grant the writ of sequestration against Lighthouse.

Yesterday’s verdict is the latest development in an increasingly bitter legal battle that has placed the port services contract for Carnival’s $600m Celebration Key project at its heart. BMLS is alleging Mr Pinder breached his “duty of fidelity” and “fiduciary duty” by using the company’s confidential financial and proprietary information to launch his own shipping agency and compete directly with it for contracts.

One of those contracts is the provision of port services for Celebration Key, Carnival’s new Grand Bahama-based cruise port, which has opened to thousands of visiting cruise passengers. The Supreme Court, on November 14 last year, granted BMLS Ltd an injunction that effectively blocked Mr Pinder and his firm from receiving payment for services provided under the contract.

The injunction, issued by Justice Andrew Forbes, as an alternative stipulated that the former BMLS general manager pay his former employer “any profits” received from the Celebration Key deal with the cruise giant. This was on the basis that Mr Pinder had allegedly used BMLS Ltd’s “confidential information” to help win the Carnival contract.

Frederick Smith KC, the Callenders & Company attorney and partner, who is Carnival’s legal adviser, is then understood to have informed Mr Pinder that the injunction prevented his client from paying him for services rendered under the Celebration Cay contract. The cruise line had itself been served with the November 14 injunction, which Mr Pinder had been unsuccessful in overturning on appeal.

However, Mr Pinder and his attorney, Osman Johnson, seized upon Mr Smith’s letter to appear before a different Supreme Court judge and argue - this time successfully - for the injunction to be “varied or discharged” on the basis that the ex-BMLS general manager “would suffer irreparable harm or be ruined” if it remained in force as is and he could not receive payment from Carnival.

Justice Constance Delancy, in a July 15, 2025, verdict altered but did not eliminate the injunction. However, she did strike out the sections preventing Mr Pinder from being paid by Carnival for services rendered or having to transfer the profits to BMLS Ltd.

Her ruling disclosed that BMLS is seeking damages from Mr Pinder for the alleged “conversion” of its external hard drive plus “deleting... confidential commercial and financial information” from the company’s hard disks. It also wants an Order to prevent Mr Pinder “undertaking shipping agency business which has the benefit of the contract for the.. Celebration Key port services”.

But Justice Delancy ruled that Mr Smith’s letter disclosing that Carnival could not pay Mr Pinder because of the injunction warranted varying its terms.

“The defendant [Mr Pinder] submitted that he would suffer irreparable harm or be ruined if the interim injunction is allowed to stand in its present iteration,” the judge wrote. She added that “it is now apparent that the defendant is being restrained from executing rights and obligations under a commercial contract vital to his enterprise” even though the injunction was designed to merely preserve the status quo.

As a result, Justice Delancy struck out or amended multiple terms in the original injunction. Besides eliminating the bar on Mr Pinder receiving payment for services provided under the Celebration Key contract, she also removed the section requiring him to return to BMLS Ltd “all the commercial and financial information” that was allegedly “stolen” and deleted from the company’s computers.

The justification for this was that it is “an impossibility” to recover deleted information. Mr Pinder, though, was ordered to return the back-up hard drive previously located at the home of BMLS’ principal, the late Michael Hall, and provide the password to unlock the company-provided cell phone.

He also cannot participate in shipping agency business that “has the benefit” of existing BMLS contracts, while the Supreme Court has also permitted “the confiscation of all confidential commercial and financial information and property of the claimant, and for the same to be seized from the defendant”.

“This includes but is not limited to all statutory financial information such as all tax returns and Business Licences, all information relating to the financial statements of the company/the claimant, balance sheet, profit and loss accounts, actuals, budgets, forecasts, all information relating to the vendors of the claimant, all information relating to the contracts of the claimant, all information relating to the clients of the claimant, and all information relating to any tender submitted by the claimant,” the surviving Supreme Court injunction said of the information to be confiscated.