Richard Lorenzo and Maria Ramirez, Hogan Lovells, Miami

A team from Hogan Lovells led by Miami attorneys obtained a partial award on jurisdiction for a client seeking compensation for a thwarted investment in the Dominican Republic.

A tribunal organized by the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington, D.C., ruled last week that the country has "clearly and unambiguously" consented to international arbitration through its free trade agreement with members of the Caribbean Community known as CARICOM.

The arbitration may now proceed on behalf of Michael Anthony Lee-Chin, a Jamaican national seeking more than $583 million in damages for a lost concession to manage a landfill in Santo Domingo.

Miami-based Hogan Lovells partners Richard C. Lorenzo and Maria Eugenia Ramirez led the team, with support from partner Mark Cheskin in Miami and others within the firm.

Lee-Chin argued he holds 90% of the shares in the Dominican company Lajún Corp. S.A., which had a concession contract to manage a landfill in Santo Domingo, where the company also had the right to develop a recycling facility and waste-to-energy plant.

The claimant said local authorities expropriated the investment without compensation in 2017 by taking military control of the landfill and bringing local actions to nullify the concession.

So far, the Caribbean country has not elaborated on the merits of the case, seeking instead to question where the dispute should be addressed.

Hogan Lovells said the partial award on jurisdiction in favor of Lee-Chin followed multiple rounds of substantive briefs, a document production phase, and a two-day jurisdictional hearing at the World Bank in Washington.

The case centers on an agreement on reciprocal promotion and protection of investments contained in Annex III of the free trade agreement between the CARICOM and the Dominican Republic, which took effect in 2002, and the 1976 arbitration rules of the U.N. Commission on International Trade Law.