Dyoll case adjourns sine die
May 19, 2006
AFTER three days of hearing evidence in the Dyoll Insurance Company versus Coffee Farmers trial in the Supreme Court, Justice Bryan Sykes yesterday adjourned the proceedings to a date to be agreed upon.
The two sides are fighting over the sum of $200 million, which the coffee farmers, represented by the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) and its insurance trustee attorney, John Vassell, are claiming is owed to them by the insurance company, as compensation for losses incurred during Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
The farmers claim that they have not received any payment since their crops were devastated by the ferocious hurricane. Up to early 2005, Dyoll Group, a publicly listed entity, was made up of a general insurance subsidiary, Dyoll Insurance; a coffee-producing entity, Dyoll/Wataru; and an associate real estate development firm, Seville Development Corporation.
The bulk of the group's assets, revenues, profits and capital was represented in the insurance subsidiary, which collapsed in 2005, following massive claims from Caymanian victims of Hurricane Ivan. Dyoll Insurance, the company with which the coffee board insured their crop, was left with hundreds of millions of dollars in asset deficiency, and is now being liquidated.
John Lee, the liquidator, claims that the money released by an overseas reinsurance company belongs to Dyoll.
Author: Observer Reporter
Source: Jamaica Observer
