Net News’ report spurs Ryan to pay

Michael Ryan,
Ritz-Carlton developer

Tuesday,  April 26, 2005

In the wake of various Cayman Net News reports about local sub-contractors who were waiting to be paid for work they had done for the Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman developer, Michael Ryan, a number of firms have now confirmed that they have finally been paid.

The contractors had previously expressed concern about the amount of money outstanding from the hotel and condo developer, because the debts were hindering some of the contractors’ ability to meet their own employee payrolls and therefore complete the job.

A number of contractors told Cayman Net News that they were approached by supervisors of Mr Ryan’s Stingray construction company and asked why they had gone to the press about the situation. Soon afterwards, they received payment of a substantial part of their outstanding invoices. 

The Ritz-Carlton development has been beleaguered by various accusations since the project began, ranging from financial difficulties to various delays in the progress of the development.

Recently the developer had advertised that the first phase of the residences would be opened in June this year — to the surprise of several contractors working there, who were convinced this was extremely unlikely.

Their expectations were justified when, in an article printed in the Caymanian Compass on Thursday 21 April, belying its title, ‘Ritz-Carlton on track for opening,’ Mr Ryan said that the residences would not be open, after all, until October. The Ritz-Carlton developer told the Caymanian Compass that “There was not a strong enough response or demand.”

In an earlier article printed in the Caymanian Compass, Mr Ryan contradicted his own court filings when he denied that the sums of money reported by Cayman Net News as being owed to sub-contractors were outstanding.

This newspaper had reported in detail figures taken from a March 25, 2005 filing in US District Court in the Southern District of New York entitled “Defendant’s Statement of Material Facts Not in Dispute”. This document was filed by Mr Ryan’s company, Humphreys (Cayman) Limited, which is the defendant in an action by Fluor Daniel Caribbean, Inc. the former general contractor for the Ritz-Carlton project, claiming some $36 million for breach of contract. Humphreys has made a counterclaim against Fluor of some $47 million. In this filing, Mr Ryan’s company states that subcontractor claims totalling $10,238,024 were unpaid. 

Humphreys went on to state that “Many of these sums will, in fact, be paid to the subcontractors by Humphreys pursuant to Humphreys taking an assignment of the subcontracts at issue.” 

Apparently, however, in some cases at least, such payments were made only after Cayman Net News revealed that money was owed to several contractors.

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