The Grand Court has upheld an order for MV Advisory Ltd., the company that previously owned the rights to the Margaritaville resort in Cayman, to pay businessman Jeremy Beck US$2 million.
The decision to uphold the order was handed down on Wednesday, 12 Jan., by Justice Margaret Ramsay-Hale, who had previously ruled in favour of Beck on 16 Nov.
The civil suit stems from a 2016 business venture between Beck and MV Cayman, in which Beck purchased 10 hotel rooms from MV Cayman that were to then be rented out to hotel guests.
The contract contained an ‘option agreement’ which would require MV Cayman to buy back the rooms from Beck if certain conditions were met. These conditions included if the rights to the Margaritaville hotel chain were lost within 10 years, and a hotel brand of a similar calibre was not obtained within a reasonable time.
When requesting that the court force MV Cayman to honour the option agreement, attorney Ben Tonner, who represented Beck, told Ramsay-Hale both groups were “commercially astute and sophisticated parties, that understood the implications of the option agreement”.
MV Cayman called on the court to deny the application and claimed it would not be able to comply with an order to repay Beck because of a lack of funds.
Following Ramsay-Hale’s initial ruling in favour of Beck, MV Cayman applied for a stay of the order until the decision could be appealed.
When denying the stay order, the justice said she accepted Tonner’s assertion that “Beck is a man of means”, and should the Court of Appeal ultimately rule against him, he would be able to repay the money to MV Cayman.
“[Beck] is entitled to the fruits of his judgment,” wrote Ramsay-Hale. “The defendant’s application for a stay of execution pending appeal is dismissed.”
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