SIMPSON BAY--Judge Van Rijen annulled a decision by the Rent Committee giving landlord Water’s Edge Development (WED) permission to end its rental agreement with Lee’s Roadside Grill at Welfare Road 84 effective May 31, 2016.
Both parties agreed during the injunction that the committee’s ruling was invalid because its members had not been legally appointed due to the lack of a proper national decree for such. This problem, having to do with the transition from the former Island Territory to the current Country St. Maarten per 10-10-10, was fixed by the Gumbs Cabinet recently with a decree for the retroactive appointment of the members.
The two parties also agreed that the committee had not been authorised in the first place because the case does not involve housing, which the judge confirmed. He also said several related demands of Lee’s owner Leon Gaston Halley regarding continued negotiations, damage compensation, actually starting the construction announced by WED and a prohibition to sublet belonged in a regular legal procedure, not a summary case.
The two parties were ordered to each pay their share of the court costs.
Rent Committee ruling on Lee’s Grill annulled
