A Glossary of Caribbean Commercial Dispute Terms

Legal English is its own dialect, and Caribbean legal English has habits of its own on top. The definitions below cover the terms a business is most likely to meet in a commercial dispute in Trinidad and Tobago and the wider English-speaking Caribbean. Each is written for a commercial reader rather than a lawyer, and where the site has a full article on a subject the definition points to it.

The people

Attorney-at-law. The single title every lawyer in Trinidad and Tobago has carried since the profession's two branches were fused in 1987. In practice the old division survives: an instructing attorney manages the client and the file, and an advocate attorney conducts the hearings. Overseas firms brief local advocates in the way described in the guide to instructing counsel from abroad.

Senior Counsel (SC). The rank marking out advocates appointed to lead the heaviest cases, the local successor to the English Queen's or King's Counsel; lawyers still call taking the rank "taking silk". The rank, how it is conferred, and what it signals are covered in the Senior Counsel reference page.

Arbitrator. A privately appointed decision-maker whose ruling, called an award, binds the parties. How arbitrators are chosen under the 2023 Act is explained in the arbitrator appointment guide.

Receiver. A person appointed, usually by a secured lender under a debenture, to take control of assets or a business and realise them to pay a debt. A receiver acts for the security holder; a liquidator, by contrast, winds up a company for its creditors as a whole.

Liquidator. The office-holder who collects a company's assets, resolves claims against it, and distributes what remains when the company is wound up. Liquidation is the end of a company; receivership need not be.

The orders

Injunction. A court order requiring someone to do something or, more often, to stop doing it. Breach is contempt of court. Against the State, courts grant declarations instead, one of several differences explained in disputes with government bodies.

Freezing injunction. An order stopping a defendant from moving or hiding assets while a case runs, still widely called a Mareva injunction after the ship in the case that created it. It is powerful and strictly policed; the conditions and costs are set out in the freezing injunctions guide.

Declaration. A court's formal statement of the parties' rights, with no coercive order attached. It sounds mild and rarely is: public bodies and regulated institutions comply with declarations because ignoring them is not a realistic option.

Disclosure order. An order compelling someone who is mixed up in wrongdoing, most often a bank, to reveal information such as where money went. The two English cases behind the jurisdiction, Norwich Pharmacal and Bankers Trust, gave the orders their names; their use is described in the banking disputes page.

Security for costs. An order that a claimant pay money into court as a condition of continuing; it is typically sought against a claimant based abroad or of doubtful means, so that a successful defendant's costs are not a paper right.

Costs. The general rule in Caribbean litigation is that the loser pays a substantial part of the winner's legal costs. Costs orders shape settlement behaviour as much as the merits do.

The routes

Judicial review. The court's supervision of public decision-making. It tests how a decision was made rather than whether it was commercially right, and it runs on a short clock: promptly and in any event within three months.

Arbitration. A private alternative to court, chosen by contract. The parties pick the tribunal, the procedure is confidential, and the award is enforceable abroad more readily than most judgments. Whether to choose it is a business decision taken at the contract stage.

Seat. The legal home of an arbitration, fixing which courts supervise it and under which law. The seat need not be where hearings physically happen.

New York Convention. The treaty that makes arbitral awards enforceable in more than 170 countries, the main reason cross-border contracts so often choose arbitration.

Registration. The faster of the two routes for enforcing a foreign judgment locally, available for judgments from a set list of mostly Commonwealth countries. Everything else proceeds by a fresh action on the judgment, as explained in the foreign judgment guide.

Pre-action letter. The formal letter setting out a claim before proceedings issue, sometimes called a letter before action. Done well it preserves deadlines, frames the dispute, and often ends it.

Without prejudice. The label that keeps genuine settlement negotiations out of evidence, so that an offer to compromise cannot be used later as an admission. It protects negotiation, not everything a party would prefer the court never saw.

The courts

High Court. The court where substantial commercial claims in Trinidad and Tobago begin, part of the Supreme Court of Judicature. Its civil procedure runs under the Civil Proceedings Rules 1998, modelled on the English rules.

Court of Appeal. The intermediate appellate court, sitting above the High Court and below the final court of appeal.

Privy Council. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, still the final court of appeal for Trinidad and Tobago and several other Caribbean states.

Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). The regional court in Port of Spain. For some countries it has replaced the Privy Council as the final court of appeal; for all CARICOM members it decides treaty disputes. Which court has the last word, and where, is mapped in the CCJ and Privy Council explainer.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a difference between a barrister and an attorney-at-law in Trinidad and Tobago? In law, no. The profession was fused in 1987 and every lawyer is an attorney-at-law. In practice the old split survives as a working arrangement: instructing attorneys manage clients and files, and advocate attorneys appear in court.

Do Caribbean courts follow English law? They apply their own constitutions, statutes, and precedents, but the systems are built on the common law, civil procedure is modelled on the English rules, and English authorities remain persuasive. A lawyer trained in one system reads the other fluently.

Which court has the final say in a Caribbean commercial dispute? It depends on the country. Trinidad and Tobago and several others still send final appeals to the Privy Council in London. Five have adopted the Caribbean Court of Justice instead: Barbados, Guyana, Belize, Dominica, and Saint Lucia.