By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The port services contract for Carnival’s $600m Celebration Key project is at the heart of a bitter legal dispute between a Freeport-based shipping agent and its former general manager.

BMLS Ltd, known as Bahamas Maritime and Logistics Services, initiated legal action against Philip Pinder, a now-former senior executive, in late October 2024 alleging he had 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 is set to officially open to thousands of visiting cruise passengers tomorrow. 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”.

Accusing Mr Pinder of breaching his “duty of fidelity” and “fiduciary duty”, BMLS Ltd sought to resist the injunction’s discharge or changes being made to its terms by arguing that there had been no “change in circumstances” to justify any adjustments. 

Gail Lockhart-Charles KC, representing BMLS Ltd, also argued that Mr Pinder was effectively seeking “a second bite at the cherry” after the Court of Appeal had dismissed his challenge to the injunction’s granting and initial terms. 

However, Justice Delancy ruled that Mr Smith’s letter disclosing that Carnival could not pay Mr Pinder because of the injunction amounted to just such a “change in circumstance” that warranted varying the initial 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.

It is understood that BMLS is likely to appeal the injunction variations to the Court of Appeal.