Less than one month after claiming victory in a New York court, Grenada's deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy, Gregory Bowen is back in the same jurisdiction fighting a legal battle against U.S oilman, Jack Grynberg.

GRENADA TODAY has obtained the copy of a motion filed last Friday by Bowen's legal team in New York - Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.

The lawyers are responding to moves made by Grynberg to take legal action against the Number Two Man in Grenada in connection with his 1996 oil and gas agreement.

The american is accusing Minister Bowen of conspiring with three Russians to deal him out of the oil deal.

Following is an edited version of the court documents filed in New York a few days ago on behalf of the Grenada Minister:

Preliminary Statement

Defendant Gregory Bowen opposes plaintiffs' Rule 21 motion to add new parties (filed July 20) and their Rule 15 motion to amend the complaint (filed August 14).

The proposed amended complaint accompanying both motions is the same: as against Minister Bowen, plaintiffs are attempting to reassert claims of tortious interference with contract and intentional tortious interference with prospective business advantages, and add a new "civil conspiracy" claim.

(Meanwhile, on August 24, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint against Mikhail Fridman, Len Blavatnik and Lev Korchangin pursuant to the Court's August 10 Opinion and Order denying Blavatnik's motion to dismiss; Bowen is not a named defendant in that amended complaint, but is identified as a co-conspirator.)

On August 10, the Court dismissed the claims against Minister Bowen in this case.

Minister Bowen now respectfully asks the Court to deny the Rule 15 and 21 motions to the extent they would permit plaintiffs to reassert or assert any of the proposed claims against him.

Argument

Plaintiffs' right to amend the complaint without leave of court "terminate(d) upon the granting of the motion to dismiss,"

and a motion to amend should be denied where the proposed amendment is futile.

An amendment to pleading is futile if the proposed claim could not withstand a motion to dismiss pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).

As to Minister Bowen, plaintiffs' proposed amendments are futile by virtue of the Court's August 10 ruling and for reasons of FSIA immunity and lack of personal jurisdiction - grounds which Minister Bowen put forth in his motion to dismiss, but on which the Court declined to rule on August 10.

PLAINTIFFS' RULE 21 AND RULE 15 MOTIONS SHOULD BE DENIED BY VIRTUE OF THE COURT'S AUGUST 10 ORDER

To the extent plaintiffs seek to reassert claims of tortious interference against Minister Bowen, such claims were dismissed on August 10 by virtue of the statute of limitations and are now barred.

Plaintiffs' proposed new claim of "civil conspiracy" is an attempt to do indirectly what plaintiffs have been told they cannot do directly. This claim is also time-barred.

On August 10, this Court held that plaintiffs' claims for tortious interference against Minister Bowen were time-barred under the applicable two-year Colorado statute of limitations that is applicable to most tort claims.

The Court reasoned that, on the face of the complaint, plaintiffs' claims against Minister Bowen accrued, at the latest, on August 31, 2004 - the point at which plaintiffs filed their request for arbitration with the ICSID.

Now, in an effort to drag Minister Bowen back into this case, plaintiffs craft the following theory: while plaintiffs accept that they were aware of facts to support their tortious interference claims against Minister Bowen on August 31, 2004, they were not aware that Minister Bowen had conspired with others to tortiously interfere with and "divert" RSM's rights until early 2006.

Plaintiffs do not dispute that Colorado's two-year statute of limitations applies, but argue that it should run from "early 2006," not August 31, 2004.

Plaintiffs cannot revive their time-barred tortious interference claims against Minister Bowen simply by repleading them as a civil conspiracy to do the same thing. If it were that easy, few tort claims would ever accrue by a date certain.

In general, courts do not permit plaintiffs to circumvent the statute of limitations by artful pleading.

In particular, courts in multiple jurisdictions do not permit a plaintiff to circumvent the statute of limitations on a tort claim by recasting it as a civil-conspiracy claim; the courts hold the plaintiff to the limitations period applicable to the underlying tort.

Even in jurisdictions, such as Colorado, where civil conspiracy is considered an independent tort, plaintiffs cannot end-run statute of limitations on an otherwise time-batted tort claim simply by repleading it as a conspiracy claim.

Even in a jurisdiction such as Colorado, a "claim for civil conspiracy is not self-supporting; rather, the underlying acts must be legal wrongs in themselves and support an independent cause action," the elements for a civil conspiracy claim require that the underlying acts be unlawful and create an independent cause of action."

There therefore must be an actionable legal wrong that underlies plaintiffs' civil conspiracy claim.

While we find no reported case in which a Colorado court has directly addressed the viability of a civil-conspiracy claim when the underlying tort is time-barred, courts in other jurisdictions where civil conspiracy is an independent tort have reached the same result as the cases cited above.

That is, these courts hold that, if the underlying tort is time-barred, the civil-conspiracy claim is time-barred.

In Colorado, there is no statute of limitations spelled out for civil-conspiracy claims specifically; rather, conspiracy claims and claims for tortious interference are both governed by the same two-year statute of limitations applicable to almost all tort actions.

This provision of Colorado law applies generally to tort claims, and also includes specific but non-exclusive references to "tortious breach of contract" and "interference with relationships".

More importantly, the Colorado statute restricts a tortious interference or other type of tort claim to two years "regardless of the theory upon which suit is brought" - a general prohibition against an attempt such as this one to avoid the limitations period by artful relabeling of a claim.

Thus, a scenario by which a plaintiff could escape the two-year limitation applicable to tortious interference claims in particular and tort claims generally, by repleading an amorphous claim of civil conspiracy, is at odds with both the wording and the Colorado legislature's plain intent reflected in section 13-80-102 (1).

In short, plaintiffs allege that Bowen and others conspired to tortiously interfere with and divert RSM's contractual rights.

This Court has dismissed the underlying tortious interference claims by virtue of the two-year statute of limitations.

Thus, the underlying legal wrong asserted is no longer viable, and, by extension, there can be no civil cause of action for the alleged conspiracy to do the same thing.

This conclusion is consistent with common sense and simple fairness. The gist of the original claims against Minister Bowen dismissed by the Court was that Minister Bowen had solicited plaintiff Grynberg for a bribe in September 1996, that Grynberg refused, that defendants Fridman and Blavatnik had bribed Bowen, and that Bowen, for these corrupt reasons, rejected RSM's license application as untimely in April 2004.

In its August 10 order, the Court found that plaintiffs were aware of both the cause and injury giving rise to these tortious interference claims on August 31, 2004 at the latest - the point at which RSM filed its request for arbitration.

Plaintiffs' proposed civil-conspiracy claim, as against defendant Bowen, is simply the same bottle with a different label on it.

Again, the gist of plaintiffs' claim against Minister Bowen is that he solicited Grynberg for a bribe, that Grynberg refused, that defendants Fridman and Blavatnik had bribed Bowen, and that Bowen, for these reasons, rejected RSM's license application as untimely in April 2004.

The only real difference is that plaintiffs now put the label "conspiracy" on all of this, while adding more colour and sensationalism to their fantastic claims.

The new revelation in "early 2006" from Melnicke that Bowen had supposedly been bribed by Fridman and Blavatnik was known to plaintiffs at the time they filed the original complaint, and it is in fact alleged in the original complaint which has now been dismissed as to Minister Bowen.

In both the original and proposed amended complaints, as against Minister Bowen, the cause and injury are the same, and the point at which they were known to plaintiffs is the same.

In this circumstance, it would be absurd to dismiss as time-barred a claim that Minister Bowen tortiously interfered with plaintiffs' contract rights because he was allegedly bribed by his co-defendants, but then resurrect the same lawsuit against Bowen simply because plaintiffs put the label "conspiracy" on it - particularly where the statute of limitations on both tortious interference and conspiracy is the same (two years) in Colorado.

Again, Colorado law restricts a claim of tortious interference to two years from discovery, "regardless of the theory upon which suit is brought".

If it were possible for a plaintiff in this circumstance to escape this restriction, then numerous plaintiffs could effectively reassert time-barred tort claims every time a court granted a defendant's motion to dismiss on statute-of-limitations grounds, simply by doubling back and alleging the later discovery that there were other participants in the tort.

The whole purpose of statutes of limitation, judicial economy and plain common sense would be undermined by such an outcome.

Accordingly, plaintiffs should not be permitted to revive their time-barred claims against Minister Bowen simply by relabeling their original allegations as a Ôcivil conspiracy" claim.

PLANTIFFS' RULE 21 AND RULE 15 MOTIONS SHOULD BE DENIED ON THE BASIS OF DEFENDANT BOWEN'S FSIA AND PERSONAL JURISDICTION DEFENSES

The proposed claims against defendant bowen are also precluded on the basis of the FSIA and personal-jurisdiction defenses asserted in defendant Bowen's motion to dismiss grounds upon which the Court declined to rule when it dismissed the claims against him on statute-of-limitations grounds on August 10.

These defenses have already been fully briefed, and defendant Bowen relied herein on those proper submissions.

Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, Minister Bowen respectfully requests that the Court deny plaintiffs' Rule 21 and Rule 15 motions as futile to the extent they seek to assert any new claims against him.

Dated August 31, 2007

New York, New York