The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Supreme Court judge has elected to impose a $6,000 fine, rather than send the directors of Freeport’s water supplier - including several Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) principals - to jail after finding it breached an Order preventing it from disconnecting a condo complex’s services.

Justice Loren Klein, in a January 15, 2026, verdict agreed it was possible to “feel a considerable degree of sympathy” for Grand Bahama Utility Company, which is 100 percent owned by the GBPA’s Port Group Ltd affiliate, because it has been “tied up in knots” by various injunctions and Orders preventing it from collecting on $427,878 in arrears owed by the Lucayan Towers South Condominium Association.

However, the latter and its attorneys in late 2025 accused GB Utility Company of breaching a prior Supreme Court Order by cutting-off water supply to Lucayan Towers South for a five-day period between October 16-21, 2025. To remedy the breach, the demanded that the court either levy a fine or commit its directors and officers to prison for contempt of court.

They included Sarah St George, also the GBPA’s co-chair; Rupert Hayward, its director; Ian Rolle, the GBPA’s president; Karla McIntosh, its in-house attorney; Deann Seymour; its chief financial officer; and Hadassah Swain. However, Justice Klein opted for the proverbial ‘slap on the wrist’ and imposed a $6,000 fine on GB Utility Company especially since it had voluntarily already remedied the Order’s breach.

He ruled that Freeport’s water supplier had become ensnared by two separate Supreme Court decisions that have stemmed from the long-running battle for control of the Board and management at Lucayan Towers South.

The first, delivered on July 18, 2024, and then reinforced days later on August 14, 2024, involved an injunction that prevented the GBPA, plus GB Utility and Grand Bahama Power Company, from terminating the provision of utility and other services to Lucayan Towers South after the trio issued a joint notice that the condo complex’s occupancy certificate was to be revoked on the basis it was no longer compliant with the building code and safety requirements.

That injunction Order still remains in effect but, subsequently, Justice Klein issued a March 31, 2025, verdict in which he granted GB Utility’s claim that Lucayan Towers South pay it the outstanding $427,879 in unpaid water bill arrears. That ruling prevented the water supplier from disconnecting services for non-payment for six months and, with that period having expired and arrears still mounting, GB Utility cut-off the condo complex on October 16, 2025.

It restored services five days later, and Justice Klein found that the ‘six-month non-disconnection’ ruling “did not supersede” the earlier 2024 injunction Order preventing utility supply cut-off in any form which still remains in effect to this day.

“The claim out of which the Order arises is the most recent in a lengthy saga of claims and applications by the first claimant [Lucayan Towers South] against the Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA)and its associated companies,” Justice Klein wrote.

“They are all concerned with satellite litigation arising out of an acrimonious legal dispute between rival boards of the claimant Association over the right to manage the condominium complex located in Freeport, which dates back to 2013. This is now my eighth judgment arising directly or indirectly out of this legal dispute….

“This protracted litigation has crippled the Association financially and deeply divided its membership. It has also stripped its ability to pay for utilities and carry out maintenance and repairs to the building. In fact, the water arrears judgment was a claim for arrears of over $400,000 owed to the defendant {GB Utility] by the first claimant for the supply of water and sewerage services accumulated since 2014, and the court granted a claim to the defendant for the sum of $427,878.”

That occurred at end-March 2025, but Justice Klein said the Order that the Association Lucayan Towers South alleged GB Utility violated stemmed from July and August 2024.

“The Order which falls for consideration in this application was obtained in a claim in which the claimants sought to challenge a notice issued by the GBPA and associated entities, the Grand Bahama Power Company and the Grand Bahama Utility Company, to revoke the occupancy certificate of the condominium,” Justice Klein wrote.

“The notice, by letter dated 2 July, 2024, was issued on the purported basis that the building no longer complied with the Freeport Building Code and other safety requirements.. The claimant Association sought to prevent the GBPA and its entities taking any action pursuant to the notice by seeking various declarations as to the legality of such action in the context of the Hawksbill Creek Agreement (HCA), and by seeking injunctive relief in the interim, which resulted in the Order with which this application is concerned.”

That Order prevented GB Utility Company and the other two entities from revoking the occupancy certificate; interfering with the Association’s “right of enjoyment” of the property; and disconnecting or interrupting water and utility services. It was the October 16, 2025, disconnection by GB Utility that sparked the contempt of court application by the Association - first on October 20, 2025, and then via a December 9, 2025, follow-up.

Godfrey Bowe, an Association director and its property manager, alleged that “he received some calls at about 5.30 pm on Thursday, 16 October, 2025, from several residents of the condominium that they were not receiving any water in their units.

“On investigation, he discovered that a locking device had been placed on the water by persons then unknown, but whom he assumed were agents or servants of the GB Utility Company. He avers that neither he, nor any other officer of director of the claimant, received notice from GB Utility Company of its intention to disrupt the water supply, so the residents were unable to make any alternative plans or accommodations”.

Ms McIntosh, a GBPA vice-president and GB Utility Company’s secretary, countered by arguing that it “cannot have been the intention” of Justice Klein’s March 31, 2025, verdict for Lucayan Towers South to “not pay one single cent” on its water bills subsequent to that verdict.”I am now convinced that the reason it has not made a single payment is because it believed it did not have to,” she alleged.

“Based on the belief that the Order for injunction in the action regarding non-payment expired on October 1, 2025, water supply services to Lucayan Towers South was disconnected on Thursday October 16, 2025, at 4pm due to non-payment. This was not an unreasonable belief based on the Order made in the judgment in the action regarding non-payment.”

Ms McIntosh argued that Justice Klein’s March 31, 2025, ruling had superseded the 2024 non-disconnection judgment, and she added: “GB Utility Company has abided by repeated orders made against it preventing it from enforcing its rights while suffering financial loss and damage. The suggestion that, after all of these years of obeying such orders, GB Utility Company willfully breached this Order has no basis.”

Justice Klein noted that water supply was restored to Lucayan Towers South by midday on October 21, 2025, and that GB Utility Company “did not deny shutting off the water”. And he added: “I accept the contention of the claimants [the Association] that the remit of the Order was wider than a prohibition relating only to action in pursuance of the revocation notice.

“While it was grounded on the revocation notice, the terms specifically enjoined the defendants from ‘otherwise’ interfering with the enjoyment of the building by disconnecting water and electricity. On a plain reading, this prevented any disconnection of the water pending the trial of the revocation of occupancy claim or until further Order…..

“In my judgment, the Order granted in the water arrears judgment which prevented the disconnection of the water by the defendant for a period of six months was a co-existing order which did not supersede the terms of the (earlier) Order,” Justice Klein added. “Any other interpretation would leave it to parties to discern by implication whether or not a later Order dealing with the same subject matter superseded or varied an earlier order which was said to last ‘until further order’.

“This would create great uncertainty and an impressionistic approach to determining compliance with the court’s orders, which cannot be countenanced. Unless and until they have been expressly discharged, superseded or varied, or have expired by effluxion of time, orders of the court continue to be in force according to their terms and must be obeyed.”

Finding that the Association had made out its case for contempt, and that the summer 2024 non-disconnection Order had been breached, Justice Klein said that while cutting-off water supply has serious health implications - especially where there is a monopoly provider as in GB Utility’s case - the violation did not last for long and was swiftly remedied.

“I am conscious of the full litigation background to this application, and in this regard one may feel a considerable degree of sympathy for the position of the defendant in light of the significant unpaid arrears for water and the multiplicity of proceedings by the claimants, which has made it impossible for it to discontinue the supply, though they would otherwise have a legal right to do so in the absence of any payment being made for their commercial services,” he said of GB Utility. “In some respects, the defendant has found itself - like ‘Gulliver’ at the hands of the ‘Lilliputians’ - tied up in knots.”

However, he added that GB Utility had other legal options open to it rather than cutting-off supply, including applying to vary or set aside the summer 2024 Order and initiating a claim against the Association for “abuse of process”.