THE Judicial Committee of the United Kingdom Privy Council yesterday freed the National Commercial Bank (NCB) of an almost $19 million liability to the Hew brothers arising from their late father’s contention that he had been led into making a bad investment by the then manager of the bank’s Montego Bay Branch, Geoffrey Cobham.

Consequentially, Raymond Hew, son of the late Stephen Hew, is now obliged, on the law lords’ orders, to meet with the bank and work out how much money they must pay to cover monies that were borrowed through an overdraft facility in the 1980s.

If he does not reach a compromise with the bank, the law lords said, then the issue is to be decided by the Supreme Court.

The decision overturned the judgment that local appellate court judges Ian Forte, Paul Harrison and Ransford Langrin wrote in favour of the Hews in 2001 after hearing the bank’s appeal against an earlier decision by Supreme Court Judge Basil Reid.

Justice Reid, after hearing the bank’s 1996 claim for a $32,527,952.98 debt which had ballooned to $137,522,513.65 by the time it came before him in March 2000, ruled that Stephen Hew be given judgement in the sum of $18,882,005.26 and that he not pay the bank another cent of the balance it claimed.

The basis of his decision was, in a nutshell, that the bank had, in breach of its fiduciary duty to Hew, used undue influence to get him to borrow $2 million to embark on a project that was doomed to fail — the development of land he owned in Barrett Town, St James.

According to Hew, a better investment would have been to develop lands he owned in the well-to-do community of Ironshore. However, the Barrett Town project was embarked upon because he wouldn’t have gotten the money, which he had always dreamed of borrowing, otherwise.

But yesterday, the law lords said they couldn’t find any evidence that the bank had pressured Hew into borrowing the money to buy the land or had given Hew bad advice.

“It is, therefore, not sufficient to render the bank liable to Mr Hew in negligence that Mr Cobham knew or ought to have known that the development of Barrett Town with the borrowed funds was not a viable proposition,” the Privy Council said. ” It must be shown either that Mr Cobham advised that the project was viable, or that he assumed an obligation to advise as to its viability and failed to advise that it was not. Their Lordships have examined the transcripts of the trial with care, and have failed to find any evidence to support any such finding.”