Magistrate dismisses civil appeal case

Resident Magistrate Nirosha Kannangara dismissed an appeal case brought before the Small Claims Tribunal in Nadi on February 23.

Govind Sami, proprietor of Sonals Keyword was ordered by the Small Claims Tribunal in Nadi, to pay the claimant, Super City Builders Pte Ltd, the sum of $3500 for works partially completed.

This was for the renovation of a singlestorey building at Uciwai, Nadi.

Mr Sami was also ordered to pay monthly instalments of $200 until the whole amount was paid and that the default of any payment would be due and payable immediately.

The court heard that Mr Sami’s grounds for appeal were that the referee, Vijayanti Naidu, erred in fact when she failed to take into consideration the report submitted by the engineer.

That she failed to consider that Mr Sami had made payments more than the work done, failure to consider laws pertaining to building code and consider that Super City Builders Pte Ltd failed to issue a contract including the scope of work. Magistrate Kannangara said the primary concern of the court was whether Mr Sami had met the threshold set out in Section 33 (1)(a) of the Small Claims Tribunal Act, as per the grounds he had based his appeal on.

“I perused the proceedings of the SCT (Small Claims Tribunal) case, I noted that the referee had given the opportunity to both parties to present their cases at the SCT hearing. The parties are at liberty to bring their witnesses before the SCT,” Magistrate Kannangara said.

The appellant and claimant were given 30 days to appeal to the High Court.