Dr Ramraj Deonarine and 4 others v Lauralee Ramcharan
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | Lord Briggs,Lord Stephens,Lord Lloyd-Jones,Lord Kitchin,Lord Burrows |
| Judgment Date | 29 December 2022 |
| Neutral Citation | [2022] UKPC 57 |
| Court | Privy Council |
| Docket Number | Privy Council Appeal No 0047 of 2021 |
[2022] UKPC 57
Lord Lloyd-Jones
Lord Briggs
Lord Kitchin
Lord Burrows
Lord Stephens
Privy Council Appeal No 0047 of 2021
From the Court of Appeal of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
Appellant
Seenath Jairam SC
Rowan Pennington-Benton
Shantal Jairam
Saira Lakhan
K.V. Jairam
(Instructed by Jihan Hosein Victoria Chambers (Trinidad))
Respondents
Hendrickson Seunath SC
Khristendath Neebar
Haresh Ramnath
(Instructed by Duke Street Chambers (Trinidad))
Respondents:
(1) Dr Ramraj Deonarine
(2) Laura Seejattan
(3) Terance Seejattan / Terrance Seejattan
(4) Gina Marie Seejattan
(5) Lisa Marie Cascarano
Lord Briggs AND Lord Stephens ( with whom Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lord Kitchin and Lord Burrows agree):
Seeram Seejattan (“Peter” to his friends) died in Trinidad on 21st March 2008. Four days earlier he had made a will (“the Will”) by which he appointed his friend Dr Ramraj Deonarine as executor, directed that his entire estate should be sold and, after payment of debts and expenses, the proceeds distributed in specified unequal shares among his four children, Terance, Laura, Gina, and Lisa (collectively “the Children”).
Peter had spent most of his working life in Florida, where he had established businesses and acquired property. But he spent the last six months of his life living in Trinidad, where he had also acquired further properties. While Peter was living and working in Florida the Appellant, Lauralee Ramcharan (“Lauralee”), cohabited with him until September 2007 when he left for Trinidad. But Peter made no provision for Lauralee in his Will.
Dr Deonarine applied for a grant of probate of the Will in May 2009, following which Lauralee intimated claims against Peter's estate, initially in correspondence with Dr Deonarine's lawyer, which she later sought to protect by lodging caveats against a grant of probate. After Dr Deonarine issued a warning in July 2011 Lauralee entered an appearance, claiming to be entitled to part of the estate, as Peter's common law wife with rights under the Succession Act and having contributed to the acquisition of his properties.
It is common ground that meanwhile there ensued negotiations between Lauralee and the Children, three of whom also lived in Florida and one in Ohio, with a view to the distribution of the estate, both in Trinidad and in Florida, between them without the need for recourse to litigation. Lauralee claims that these negotiations culminated in the making of three documents (“the Compromise Documents”) signed by her and by or on behalf of each of the Children, two in January 2012 and the third in June 2012. It will be necessary to describe them in more detail in due course but, in outline, their combined effect was to provide as follows:
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(a) Lauralee was to receive specific properties in Trinidad, and in return to make available from her own resources US$66,670 for payment of real estate taxes owing on properties owned by Peter in Florida,
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(b) Specified properties in Florida were to be transferred (or sold and the proceeds transferred) to Lauralee and specified Children,
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(c) The rest of Peter's estate was to be divided equally between Lauralee and each of the Children, ie in 20% shares.
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(d) Lauralee was to be appointed as the personal representative of Peter in Florida.
The Compromise Documents were expressed to be governed by the laws of Trinidad and Tobago. The first two comprised an Agreement of Arrangement, Settlement and Compromise (“the Agreement”) and a Deed of Arrangement, Settlement and Compromise (“the Deed”) in substantially the same terms. The third was described as a Deed of Rectification (“the Deed of Rectification”). Various documents had inadvertently been omitted from the Deed and the purpose of the Deed of Rectification was to amend the Deed by adding those documents to it. All three of the Compromise Documents were or purported to be witnessed by the same person, one Krishna D Harry. They were all registered in Trinidad and Tobago, as required for documents executed abroad. Copies of the Agreement and of the Deed were also sent to Dr Deonarine's lawyer on 21 May 2012. The terms enshrined in the Compromise Documents will be referred to as “the Compromise”.
In April 2013 Lauralee issued proceedings in the High Court of Trinidad and Tobago against Dr Deonarine and the Children, seeking to enforce the terms of the Compromise. She claimed in the body of her Statement of Case to have been a cohabitant with Peter. Her pleading also asserted as part of its narrative that she had acquired beneficial interests in Peter's properties in Trinidad under a common intention trust but made no specific claim to alternative relief on that basis. Finally, she claimed (also as part of the narrative to her claim to enforce the Compromise) to have been given a specific property in Trinidad, known as Laura's Valley, as a donatio mortis causa. But again, no claim was made in the prayer for any specific relief on that ground.
The prayer for relief sought a declaration that the Will be not admitted to probate, a declaration that the Compromise Documents had the immediate effect of varying the provisions of the Will, an order that Lauralee be appointed as Peter's personal representative in place of Dr Deonarine for the purpose of administering the estate in accordance with the Compromise, and an order for the dismissal of the contentious probate proceedings by which Dr Deonarine was seeking to prove the Will. The prayer ended with conventional pleas for all appropriate orders, accounts and enquiries, and for “Further and/or other relief as to the Court shall seem just”. The Statement of Case had attached to it, inter alia, copies of the Compromise Documents.
Dr Deonarine defended Lauralee's claim with a denial of many of the facts on which it was based, but an admission of the Compromise Documents coupled with a non-admission as to their alleged effect.
The Children took a much more trenchant line in their joint Defence and Counterclaim. They said that Lauralee had never cohabited with Peter, and had been no more than a baby-sitter for Gina and Lisa, before marrying Terance in 1995. They denied that Lauralee had made any contribution to the properties purchased by Peter. More to the point they denied having signed the Compromise Documents, averring that they had signed a different, shorter document, consistent with a different oral compromise. In their counterclaim they alleged that the Compromise Documents were a fraud. In their particulars of fraud they pleaded:
“Substituting and/or replacing all but the last page of a document executed by the Co-Defendants and fraudulently alleging and/or purporting same to be the Co-Defendants' document.”
They also alleged as particulars of fraud that they, and Terance in particular, had been coerced and forced to accede to Lauralee's demands by the threat of lengthy legal proceedings.
Pleadings were followed by witness statements, and the claim and counterclaim about the validity of the Compromise was fought out in full at a trial before Dean-Armorer J, in which Lauralee, Terance and Gina were all cross-examined at length, and two statutory declarations by Krishna D Harry in 2012, verifying having witnessed the signatures on the Deed and Deed of Rectification, were admitted in evidence. It will be necessary to describe the evidence and the course of the trial in some detail in due course, but it is sufficient for present purposes to say that the issue as to whether the Compromise Documents were genuine or a fraud was litigated with all the close attention to detail which such a serious allegation deserved, evidently on the shared assumption by both sides that the issue would finally be determined by the judge in her judgment.
In her detailed reserved judgment, handed down on 3 November 2017, the judge recognised, as an issue of fact which she had to decide, whether the Compromise Documents were in fact documents signed by the parties: (para 39). It is plain that she correctly recognised that issue as one turning upon an allegation of fraud. The judge also regarded it as incumbent upon her to decide, in addition to the main issue about the validity of the Compromise, the questions whether there had been a donatio mortis causa in relation to Laura's Valley, or a common intention trust of a number of Peter's properties, and also whether Lauralee had a claim for financial provision as a cohabitant under the Succession Act.
She found that Lauralee had cohabited with Peter, but that she failed to qualify under the Succession Act because cohabitation had ended before Peter's death, when he left Florida for Trinidad under a deportation order. She also ruled against the donatio mortis causa. But she found that a common intention trust had been established by the evidence, although only in relation to Laura's Valley.
On the all-important issue about the validity of the Compromise she held that, in principle, there was no reason why the beneficiaries could not together agree to vary the dispositions effected in a will, in accordance with the principle in Saunders v Vautier (1841) 4 Beav 115 as applied in Crowden v Aldridge [1993] 1 WLR 433, but not so as to replace an executor named in the Will. Nor could any claim to enforce such an agreed variation be entertained prior to the grant of probate, so that Lauralee's claim to do so was premature.
Nonetheless when reviewing the Counterclaim the judge observed that Krishna D Harry's statutory declaration verifying the Children's signatures on the Compromise Documents “completely destroys any possibility of fraud”: (para 80). She also regarded the coercion part of the fraud claim as lacking in merit because the evidence demonstrated the...
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