Bellozanne battle: St Helier's legal costs mount up

Monday 05 December 2016

Jersey’s Royal Court is making St Helier pay the Department for Infrastructure’s legal costs in a recent court battle over waste disposal charges.

Those costs will be in addition to the Parish’s own legal costs of £145,051.

The row goes back to 1952, when the Parish allowed the waste facility to be built on its land at Bellozanne, in return for a covenant protecting parishioners from paying for waste disposal.

Although a new incinerator has now been built at the Waterfront the Parish still argues the deal stands. The Department for Infrastructure though disagrees. Since they couldn’t come to an agreement it was left to the Royal Court to settle.

It decided the covenants were badly written, but nevertheless were ‘spent and extinguished’ and supported the Department for Infrastructure: “the Bellozanne covenants were ambiguous, both on their face and latently, as a result of the way the parties had originally drafted them. That failure to draft with clarity was the cause for the matter being referred to the Court for clarification…”

Because it won the court battle, the Department for Infrastructure wants the parish to pay its legal costs. The Parish argued it shouldn’t have to on two grounds. One, because the court battle wasn’t ‘hostile’. And two, because it was important for the whole Island to have the matter sorted out.

But the court says the Parish has got it wrong. Just because the two parties didn’t adopt a ‘hostile’ approach doesn’t mean the winning party shouldn’t have its fees paid. And secondly, the Parish was wrong to bring the case, and by implication the Department for Infrastructure incurred legal fees for fighting a battle it shouldn’t have had to face.

The judgement doesn’t say how much the battle has cost St Helier, but the bill could soon go even higher. The parish is fighting the original court decision. If it loses that it’s likely it’ll once again not only have to pay its legal fees for the appeal but also the Department for Infrastructure’s costs.