Remy v Weekes

• Jurisdiction: St Lucia
• Judge: Manning, J.
• Judgment Date: 29 May 1959
• Neutral Citation: LC 1959 HC 5
• Docket Number: No. 33 of 1958
• Court: High Court (Saint Lucia)
• Date: 29 May 1959

Supreme Court of the Windward and Leeward Islands. (Civil Jurisdiction)

Manning, J.

No. 33 of 1958

Remy

and

Weekes

Appearances:

V. A. Cooper for plaintiff.

D. A. McNamara for defendant.

Real property - Waste

Facts: The plaintiff owner claimed that she left the defendant in charge of a certain property and that the defendant cut down trees without her permission and as a result the value of the land had deteriorated.

Held: The appellant's evidence would be accepted. The defendant exceeded his authority in cutting down the trees. Judgment given for the plaintiff in the sum of $150 damages.

Manning, J.

1 About the year 1932 the plaintiff, Stella Remy, left St. Lucia to go to Cayenne. She had acquired a portion of land on the “Jolimont” Estate in the Quarter of Castries and she left this in charge of one Dickson Lynch. She returned to St. Lucia in 1935, with the intention of again going back to Cayenne. On this occasion, Lynch informed her that he was no longer able to continue his supervision of the estate. Remy then put the defendant, Bremille Weeks, in charge of the land and returned to Cayenne. She said that hey arrangement with Weeks was “he can reap the crops, he can plant a garden and take produce. I left a house for him, he was to occupy the house free; I didn't have to pay him nor he me”.

2 When she came back to St. Lucia in 1957, she found that a large number of trees had been cut down; she had not, she says, given Weeks permission to cut down so many trees. He cut down so many trees that the land had deteriorated in value, and she sues Weeks for damages.

3 Weeks' account of the arrangement with Remy was that she put him in charge, as others had been destroying the land. He was to work the land; he said she promised to sell him the land on her return from Cayenne. He considered that the land belonged to him; there was no arrangement not to cut down trees, so he cut some down, and used the wood to repair the house, to make coal, to provide fuel for his sugar and farine mills and to make gardens for himself. He was an unsatisfactory witness and I believe that Remy's account of the arrangement is substantially correct; that Weeks exceeded his authority in cutting down trees beyond what was implicit in his agreement and that he is liable to compensate Remy.

4 There was evidence from one Atkinson that in December, 1958, he inspected the land and saw stumps of former large trees cut many...