Members of a church group in Samoa have been ordered not to enter the land of a family which had been banished from the village of Tanugamanono, but which was later awarded thousands in compensation.
Samoa’s Land and Titles court has issued an injunction stopping members of the Congregational Christian Church at Tanugamanono from doing any further work on the family’s land.
A family member says they sought the order after church members continued cultivating the land, thinking the family would never return.
A group of matais, recently lost an appeal against a damages award it has pay for banishing a family from the village.
The appeal has been dismissed but the amount of punitive damages has been cut by 50,000 US dollars.
They were to pay about 400,000 US dollars in damages, including legal costs, to the family of Afu Faumuina Tutuila for the banishment and the destruction of their property, including houses and vehicles.
The 16 defendants, including two former MPs of the ruling HRPP party, had appealed against the original ruling by the Supreme Court.
The case has its roots in a dispute between the Tutuila family and the faipule or village leaders of Tanugamanono.
On 20 August 2010, the Court ruled on a compromise between the church and the family where the church would get its extra land and the family would be able to stay on next door.
The Court compromise centred on a floral hedge row that had grown up between the two properties.
However, village elders were angered by the family going to the Land and Titles Court and unlawfully, “in defiance of the Constitution and the Land and Titles Court, met and resolved to banish the whole family from Tanugamanono,” according to a 2012 Supreme Court ruling.
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