INDICATING THAT they were becoming impatient with the tactics of General Manager Company, lawyers representing Dennis Joslin said Tuesday that the bad debt collector was prepared to put the apartments up for sale next month if the developer fails to pay off the mortgage on the property.
And as the legal wranglings continue, lawyers representing General Management Company, developer/manager of the Dorchester apartments, have threatened tenants with legal action if they choose to pay rent to Dennis Joslin's appointed receiver Ken Tomlinson.
Information coming to Wednesday Business from inside the apartment complex is that while several tenants "who can afford it " have been seeking legal advice on their options, several plan to continue paying rent for now to GMC, a company owned by John Cooke.
The occupants pay monthly rentals ranging between $23,000 and $35,000 for studio, one bedroom and two bedroom apartments.
Wednesday Business learned that up to yesterday no one had paid rent to Tomlinson.
STILL PAYING RENT
"Some of us are still paying rent to GMC," said one tenant. "We are ignoring Dennis Joslin," he said, adding that the affected residents were peeved because prior to Tomlinson's July letter advising of his appointment by Joslin Jamaica/Jamaica Redevelopment Foundation Inc., no one had met with them to explain what was happening.
The 34 affected tenants have been bombarded with correspondence from both sides since July, each demanding that rent was to be paid to them.
"I think the whole thing was kinda sloppy, and badly done," he said. "The only reason we believe they (GMC) are in trouble is they haven't painted the place for about five years."
Joslin's lawyers, meantime, have indicated that the bad debt collector will take no action to sell the apartments before October 2 when the parties are due back in court - an undertaking he gave "out of courtesy," said Sandra Minott Phillips of Myers Fletcher and Gordon.
But charging that GMC has been using delaying tactics, including requests for postponement of their own case, Minott-Phillips said "given the way they are behaving, come October 2 they can expect no further quarter."
further quarter."
Wilkinson did not respond to a request for comment.
Minott-Phillips said Joslin's objective is to collect the mortgage debt, and that he is prepared to sell the apartments to recoup the monies if no deal emerges with GMC, which has been trying to bar the sale of the property.
"If the debt is paid, then there will be no sale," she said.
The mortgage on the Dorchester was first taken out at $34 million, with a further $75 million added a year later, but Minott-Phillips refused comment on the current portion of the debt that was still outstanding.
GMC developed the property a decade ago in a joint venture with the National Housing Corporation, now rolled into the National Housing Development Corporation. NHDC has been watching court proceedings in the matter.
REGRETTABLE
In an August 28 letter to the occupants, signed by Ian Wilkinson of Ian G Wilkinson and Company, the attorney said while it was "regrettable" that the Dorchester tenants had been "caught up in this problem", failure to pay monthly rent to GMC "will result in legal problems for you."
Two days before, Myers Fletcher and Gordon had also threatened them with legal action.
But Minott-Phillips says Wilkinson was spouting "abject nonsense" and that she was prepared to instruct her client to evict those tenants who continue paying rent to GMC.
Tomlinson was appointed receiver of 34 apartments in June by bad debt collector Dennis Joslin, under power of a 1993 mortgage which Joslin acquired as part of the bad debt portfolio he bought from FINSAC. The mortgage was previously held by NCB Trust and Merchant Bank.
The debt was transferred to Joslin's Texas registered company Jamaica Redevelopment Foundation Inc on June 6, having previously been transferred in 1998 to Refin Trust, a company created by FINSAC to hold the NCB debts that it had assumed when it rescued the commercial bank.
But in his letter, Wilkinson who said he was writing on behalf of GMC and its staff, indicated that the developer would be contesting the legality of the receiver's appointment in court, on the basis that "the conditions necessary for the appointment of a receiver have not been met."
He charges that Joslin acted unilaterally.
Minott-Phillips in response said that Wilkinson was conveniently ignoring the fact that the Registrar of Titles Act, Section 125 (1) under which Tomlinson was appointed, allows Joslin "by writing under his hand to appoint a receiver" when he wants to dispose of the property.
