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Just over a month and a half ago, we told you about how agronomist Angel Tzec sued the Ministry of Natural Resources because they shared up a section of a piece of land that he was the lease holder for. His lease for 250 acres in the Cayo District expired in 2011, but just before that happened, he cleared up his arrears and in even pre-paid his land fees to the government a few months ahead of the time.

He was under the impression that the Government acknowledged his interest in the land, and he went there shortly after the lease expired to speak with the Lands Department staff to start the process to get it renewed. That process was notoriously slow, and shortly after those meetings, the 2012 General Elections happened. Tzec found out afterwards that the Lands Department had given out a lease to a portion of the land he was paying fees for. He says that he went to both the Lands Commissioner and the Minister of Lands who assured him that the error would be cleared up, but weeks later, they started giving him the run-around.

Frustrated, he sued the Government and got his day in court on May 22. Today, Justice Shona Griffith delivered her oral judgment. She didn't out rightly dismissed his case, but she noted that his public law case was misguided. She offered him an opportunity to come back and sue the Lands Ministry not as a Government agency, but as a party to a private contract. His attorney explained the implications of the conclusion of the case:

Wayne Piper – Attorney for Angel Tzec

"She has not given us the written decision as yet but she did give us certain areas of her findings. The judge had found that on the evidence Mr. Tzec had a lease. She had found that he had made an application for an extension and by all the evidence it appears that the extension was in fact approved. He had made payments, further payments in terms of the lease that were accepted. However, on the point of the matter being in judicial review, the judge dismissed our claim stating that the government was acting it it's commercial capacity rather than in it's government or public law capacity. So the judge pretty much slammed the door on us in terms of this claim but left it open in terms of our findings and in terms of the fact that we are still able to bring another claim for private law remedy being the breach of the lease agreement or the breach of representations for an extension of the lease term."

Angel Tzec – Suing the Ministry of Natural Resource

"I am actually pleased to say that the judges findings was totally positive towards this case. Because the bottom line is I still have a lease. Because having paid all the arrears, having gone through the entire process required to go through the payments of the arrears and lease, etc. She found out that well, technically I have a right to the land up to now. The only hitch on the process was that, I used the wrong court. I used the public court instead of the private court because a lease basically is a contractual arrangement. I am prepared to go through to the end because I am a warrior, an Indian warrior and I go to the end. So I think that if we cannot come to an amicable resolution to this problem, we are going to the private court."

Tzec says that he would prefer to settle this case out of court with government, but if there is no amicable resolution, he will come back with a private lawsuit have the court compel the Government to fix this land issue.