By RASHAD ROLLE 

Triune News Editor 

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE UK-based Privy Council has declined to hear an appeal from Coalition of Independents leader Lincoln Bain and his company, Bani Shoe Warehouse, bringing a close to a long-running civil dispute over a failed investment arrangement dating back to 2010.

The Court of Appeal had upheld a 2021 Supreme Court ruling that found Bain and his company liable to repay $64,000 to Zinnia Rolle.

Mr Bain, responding to the decision yesterday, told The Tribune: “The courts have spoken. The person in question will be paid.”

He said paying the money will not affect him financially, adding: “We’ll just pay it and that’s it.”

At the heart of the case was a claim that Mr Bain had entered into two agreements with Ms Rolle in 2010. One required him to hold $40,000 in trust for three years with annual interest payments and an option to invest the funds. The other was a supply and profit-sharing agreement with Bani Shoe Warehouse, under which Ms Rolle provided merchandise in exchange for a share of sales.

Ms Rolle alleged that she never received the money owed to her under either agreement. Mr Bain denied the claims, arguing that he never received funds to invest and that his signature on the contracts had been forged. His co-defendant, Keno Symonette, testified that he had forged Mr Bain’s signature at Ms Rolle’s request. However, the trial judge rejected their account and accepted Ms Rolle’s evidence.

Although the Supreme Court handed down its judgment in December 2021, more than four years after the 2017 trial, the Court of Appeal found the delay to be “a blight on the administration of justice”, but not grounds to overturn the verdict.

Court of Appeal president Sir Michael Barnett wrote: “In my judgment, however egregious and culpable the delay in this case was, that delay did not prevent the judge from properly evaluating the evidence and making the finding that was determinative of this case.”

However, Mr Bain did score a partial victory in 2022 when the Court of Appeal struck down an “addendum” to the judgment that had imposed a 90-day prison sentence if he failed to repay the debt by a specified deadline. The court found the penal order to be “plainly wrong to have been made” without hearing from the affected parties.

The Privy Council was asked to decide whether the delay in delivering the Supreme Court’s judgment had violated Bain’s right to a fair trial within a reasonable time or compromised the judge’s ability to assess the case. It ruled this week that it would not hear the appeal.