A landmark High Court ruling in Saint Lucia has cleared the way for the state-backed investment promotion agency Invest Saint Lucia to move forward with efforts to recover more than $200,000 in long-overdue unpaid rent from Mayers Printing Company and its owner Guy Mayers. The decision, handed down April 13 by Justice Alvin Pariagsingh, threw out a last-ditch legal attempt by Mayers to block the agency from enforcing the outstanding debt, and found the company’s legal challenge to be entirely without merit.
The dispute traces back to commercial property leased by Mayers Printing at the Bisee Industrial Estate. Court documents show that rent payments fell into arrears across an 18-year period, from December 2004 through December 2022, with the total unpaid sum amounting to $209,603.06. Under the Invest Saint Lucia Act, the agency is authorized to convert unpaid rent into a formal court-recognized judgment debt after completing a set of required regulatory steps. After sending multiple payment notices that went unanswered and seeing no action from the company to resolve the debt, Invest Saint Lucia completed the formal registration of the debt as a judgment in February 2023.
Represented by his legal team, Mayers mounted two core arguments to block further enforcement. First, he claimed that the agency was overstepping its legal authority by pursuing multiple recovery avenues at once — including an attempt to garnish funds from his personal bank account at First National Bank — arguing the law only permitted a single method for rent collection. Second, Mayers contended that most of the debt was no longer enforceable under local statutes that set time limits on claims for unpaid rent.
Justice Pariagsingh rejected both of these positions outright in his final ruling. The judge clarified that once unpaid rent is properly converted to a judgment debt under the act, it is treated the same as any other court-ordered judgment, meaning Invest Saint Lucia is not restricted to a single collection method and can pursue any combination of legal avenues to recoup the outstanding funds. He further noted that the statutory time limits for claims of rent arrears no longer apply once the debt has been formally converted to a judgment, as it is reclassified as a court-enforced debt rather than a standard uncollected rent claim.
The ruling also noted that Invest Saint Lucia’s attempt to garnish Mayers’ First National Bank account had already failed, not for any legal flaw, but because the account held insufficient funds to cover the debt at the time of the attempt. The judge emphasized that trying multiple recovery strategies after earlier attempts prove unsuccessful is not an improper legal practice, but a standard approach to collecting unpaid judgments.
With Mayers’ application to strike out the judgment summons now dismissed, the summons remains fully valid. This leaves Invest Saint Lucia free to continue all planned enforcement actions, including future attempts to garnish Mayers’ income or other assets if sufficient funds become available. In addition to rejecting the challenge, the court ordered Mayers to cover all legal costs associated with the application. The final ruling sets a clear precedent that long-outstanding commercial debts, even those accumulated over decades, remain enforceable through the court system once properly converted to judgment debts, and that debtors remain liable for full payment until the entire debt is settled.