Mullet Bay Apartments Association
appeals ruling to rebuild nine units
St. Maarten--PHILIPSBURG--Mullet Bay Apartments Association (MBAA) is appealing the Court’s ruling in favour of nine Mullet Bay apartment owners to rebuild their property next to the beach. MBAA Chairman John Schepisi says the judge was “wrong.”
Schepisi said not only did the Court have the worst timing, but the ruling could also negatively affect the strategy to settle with SunResorts. He said the apartment owners had booked a slight victory in February that had provided a window of opportunity for a settlement and eventually rebuilding the hotel property. SunResorts has appealed that February ruling.
“I hope that this ruling hasn’t negatively affected the interests of everyone,” said Schepisi of the ruling of April 11, in which nine apartment owners and their lawyer Jelmer Snow convinced the Court to order the defendant, the Foundation for Protection of Tourist Investment, to cooperate with the rebuilding of so-called Building 90.
Schepisi said the nine unit owners only represented a fraction of the 227 apartment owners who had seen their property destroyed by Hurricane Luis in September 1995. The property, consisting of 300 units, has not been rebuilt and litigation has gone on for many years. Building 90, in which Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands once stayed during a visit to St. Maarten, has been demolished.
The actions of the nine apartment owners have affected the rest, said Schepisi on Sunday. “We have a good team and our slight victory in Court was a step in the right direction. This ruling is not and instead of working together, pushing for this after 10 years may hurt everyone,” he said. He said the apartment owners in question should have waited for a final decision in the main court case and a settlement proposal. He said they had been asked to wait, but to no avail.
“Their lawyer (Snow, ed.) pressed the Court for a result,” he said, suggesting a solution could have been found for Building 90 and the other properties through negotiation if the owners had stuck together. “If they had waited 60 days, it would have been more beneficial to all,” he said.
The property rights of each unit owner are connected with the rights of the other unit owners, explained Schepisi, who is a partner at the Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, law firm Schepisi & McLaughlin. He said each unit owner had the right to the usage and income derived from that usage under the agreement. “The Court disregarded that provision,” he said.
Also, the foundation is left with the problem to whom to convey the property, Schepisi said. He said the efforts by the nine owners were “ineffective” without the involvement of the 10th owner, SunResorts. “Whom do I convey the property rights to? SunResorts should have been in this case since day one,” he said.
In his ruling of April 11, Judge Hoekstra ordered the foundation to cooperate with efforts to rebuild Building 90, measuring 2,360m2, and the splitting up of the property rights in favour of the plaintiffs, Island Gem Enterprises of Milton Graub and others. The judge considered the actions taken by the owners to rebuild their units “understandable and rightly.” The owners want to split Building 90, once rebuilt, into apartments.
Nevertheless, Schepisi and MBAA, who have appealed the April 11 ruling, remain slightly optimistic. “I am hopeful that we could resolve everything,” he said, explaining that the association’s “ambition and desire” was to settle the litigation with SunResorts to the end that Mullet Bay can be rebuilt. “We have to settle first so the most beautiful property in the Caribbean can be rebuilt,” said Schepisi, who called the property’s state sinful. (Suzanne Koelega)
St Maarten vacation rental
