Suva lawyer Isireli Fa has described an application to strike out a civil action involving 5000 former soldiers as negligent and stupid.
The former military personnel claim they were not paid their location allowances and other ancillary allowances while on peacekeeping duties in Lebanon between 1978 and 2002.
The plaintiffs claim the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) had paid the Republic of Fiji Military Forces and the Government for disbursement to personnel who’d been deployed to Lebanon for peacekeeping duties, but that they had not been paid this money.
The RFMF, Minister for Home Affairs and the Attorney-General are the named defendants in the proceedings.
Last week, at the hearing of the A-G’s Office strike-out application, their lawyer submitted the plaintiffs’ claims ought to be struck out because there was no reasonable cause of action on the basis that it was statute barred and that the matter could not be re-litigated pursuant to Section 4(1) of the Limitations Act, as it had already been determined by the courts back in 2002, 2014 and 2016.
Mr Fa then pointed out that pursuant to Section 4(7) of the Limitations Act, the plaintiffs’ case was not statute-barred as the provision did not apply to claims for equitable relief.
In light of this, he said such applications and arguments being raised by the defendants’ counsel were frustrating to deal with, and that to date they have patiently asked the defendants, on numerous occasions, to file their statement of defence so that the matter could proceed without hindrance.
Mr Fa submitted that if the plaintiffs’ allegations were true, then this “would be the largest fraud in the world”, pointing out that the whole basis of the claim was for equitable relief, in particular, breach of the fiduciary duties of the three defendants.
The three defendants, when queried by the Acting Master of the High Court Liyanage Kashyapa Wickramasekara to point out any evidence which showed that the present claim was not equitable or one based on contract, they could not provide any.
Mr Fa told the court he was willing to give the defendants time to file a statement of defence and forgo the strike-out application.
The defendants, after the short break, informed the court that as per instructions, their stance was to go ahead with the application.
Acting Master Wickramasekara will deliver his ruling on the strike-out application on June 19.
