A Government Health Authority Got Sued for $2.9 Million in Unpaid Rent

• SERHA owed rent from March to October 2021
• The landlord’s attorney sought a default judgment
• The attorney general was named as a second defendant
• SERHA had already moved out of the property

The South East Regional Health Authority was taken to court over $2.904 million in outstanding rent, covering the period March to October 2021, after the government agency vacated a rented property without settling what it owed on it. The landlord’s attorney, Henry, told the Gleaner the claim also covered a security deposit and rent for December 2020 and January 2021 that had gone unpaid before the eventual departure.

The dispute reached the point of a formal court filing after informal efforts to resolve it evidently stalled. Henry said his client had considered applying for a default judgment, since no defence had been filed on SERHA’s behalf, until the director of state proceedings, acting through her attorney, applied for a 45-day extension in mid-January to actually file one. The attorney general was named as a second defendant in the matter, reflecting the government’s own legal exposure alongside the health authority itself.

SERHA regional director Errol Greene confirmed the basic facts while declining to elaborate. I can confirm that we have received correspondence from her attorney and I can confirm that we had engaged her. We had rented a property from her, he said. That’s all I am prepared to say, an unusually brief public response for a government health authority facing a formal breach-of-lease claim.

The case is a small but concrete example of a broader friction that runs through government’s relationship with private landlords: public bodies renting commercial space are still ordinary tenants under Jamaican rent law, and a landlord’s legal recourse against a defaulting government agency runs through the same courts, and the same procedural extensions, as any private tenant dispute would, regardless of which side of the lease happens to be the state.

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