Court of Appeal Overturns $2.1 Million Judgment Against Government

The Government of Belize will not have to pay $2.1 million after the Court of Appeal overturned a High Court ruling last Friday, August 29.

The case involved Rudolph Ramirez and Julius Zabaneh, who had sued the Government over 14.76 acres of land on Cats Caye in the Stann Creek District. In 2008, the land was mistakenly sold to Ramirez, who later sold it to Zabaneh. At the time, it was believed the land was still national property, but records showed it had already been sold by the Government three years earlier.

In 2021, the claimants took the matter to court, demanding almost $9 million, which they said was the market value of the property. The High Court ruled in January 2024 that the Government must pay them over two million dollars, basing its decision on an earlier case involving Andre Vega. In that case, the Government had been ordered to compensate Vega after he unknowingly bought land that had already been sold many years before.

However, the Court of Appeal disagreed in this instance. The judges found that Ramirez and Zabaneh knew, when the title was reissued in 2019, that the Government no longer owned the land. The court said that under those circumstances, it would be wrong to force taxpayers to pay millions of dollars in damages.

In their written judgment, the Court of Appeal stressed that the Vega ruling should only apply to cases where the buyer was completely unaware of a previous sale. The court said the High Court judge was mistaken to apply that ruling as a general principle.

The Attorney General’s Ministry welcomed the outcome, saying it protects Belizeans from unfair financial burdens caused by duplicate land titles. The Ministry also noted that this decision gives the Government stronger grounds to fight similar claims in the future.

The Government expressed thanks to Senior Counsel Eamon Courtenay and Assistant Solicitor General Samantha Matute, who worked on the appeal.