The appeal by Fagafagamanualii Theresa McCarthy against a Supreme Court decision of July 2020, has been dismissed.
This is over a “longstanding land dispute” between Fagafagamanualii and the Samoa National Provident Fund over the transference of land by the Government to SNPF.
The decision was handed down earlier this week by his Honour Chief Justice Satou Simativa Perese, Justices Blanchard, and Harrison.
The appellant was ordered to pay $5,000 together with usual disbursements.
“Were it not for Mrs. McCarthy’s impecuniosity [as her lawyer] explained it to us, we would have awarded indemnity costs in recognition of the hopeless nature of her appeal.”
The appellant is represented by Leuluaialii Olinda Woodroffe, while Semi Leung Wai is the lawyer for the SNPF.
The appeal from the judgment of Justice Leiataualesa Darryl Clarke in the Supreme Court is the culmination of a long-running dispute about the transfer by the Government to the SNPF of land which its original owner, the appellant had earlier implicitly undertaken to create public roads, by procuring approval, of a scheme plan and deposit of a plan subdivision showing the land as roads and agreeing to dedicate them for this purpose.
Thereafter the Government proceeded on the basis that the roads has been vested in it.
According to the background of this case, after obtaining sub-divisional approval, the appellant constructed a 20-room two-storey hotel, on the land, which she had undertaken to set aside as public roads but has never formed or dedicated.
The land was immediately adjacent to a parcel of her land on which she had earlier constructed a 10-room hotel, called the Blue Pacific Hotel.
The appellant then mortgaged an old hotel site to the SNPF, separate from the Blue Pacific Hotel. “In time she defaulted on her loan obligations and the SNPF purchased the old hotel property in the exercise of its power for sale.
“Some years later the Government transferred the new hotel property to the SNPF.”
These events generated a considerable amount of “ancillary litigation”.
The 11-page ruling states the Appellant had no interest in the validity or otherwise of the Government’s subsequent transfer of the land to the SNPF, effected without a register-able memorandum where its purpose was to implement a transaction based on an agreed exchange of values between the parties.
“It is most regrettable [the Appellant’s] counsel did not recognize that her case was devoid of any merit from the outset before advancing this appeal, which we add for the sake of the completeness did not raise any questions of general importance for the law of Samoa about the misconstruction or misuse of the meanings of English words.”
