Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

For­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar has re­sumed du­ties as a High Court Judge.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Ay­ers-Cae­sar took up du­ties in the Ju­di­cia­ry last month, weeks af­ter the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil de­liv­ered judg­ment in the fi­nal ap­peal of her law­suit over be­ing pres­sured by Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC) and its chair­man, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, in­to re­sign­ing al­most eight years ago.

Al­though she has re­sumed du­ties, the Ju­di­cia­ry’s web­site has not yet been up­dat­ed to re­flect this change in its list­ing of per­ma­nent and act­ing High Court judges and mas­ters.

Le­gal sources said since tak­ing up du­ties, Ay­ers-Cae­sar has on­ly been deal­ing with cas­es in cham­ber and not open court mat­ters.

They al­so claimed her le­gal team, led by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, is ex­pect­ed to com­mence dis­cus­sions with the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al about the com­pen­sa­tion owed to her as a re­sult of her suc­cess in her case.

In the event that the dis­cus­sions do not bear fruit, a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer is ex­pect­ed to do an as­sess­ment.

In April 2017, Ay­ers-Cae­sar was ap­point­ed a High Court Judge. Two weeks lat­er, she re­signed from the post amid pub­lic crit­i­cism over al­most 50 cas­es she had left un­fin­ished when she took up the pro­mo­tion.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar then filed the law­suit in which she claimed she was pres­sured by Archie and the JLSC in­to re­sign­ing un­der the threat that her ap­point­ment would be re­voked.

Archie and the JLSC de­nied any wrong­do­ing and claimed that Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s fail­ure to dis­close the full ex­tent of her un­fin­ished case­load was suf­fi­cient­ly se­ri­ous to war­rant a dis­ci­pli­nary in­quiry.

Archie claimed that he had sug­gest­ed re­sign­ing and re­turn­ing as a mag­is­trate to com­plete the cas­es but main­tained that he did not pres­sure or threat­en her. He al­so claimed that nei­ther he nor the JLSC had the pow­er to take the ac­tion at­trib­uted to them by Ay­ers-Cae­sar.

They con­tend­ed that Ay­ers-Cae­sar ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and freely ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion with the in­ten­tion, at that time, to re­turn as a mag­is­trate to com­plete the part-heard cas­es.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s law­suit was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed by High Court Judge David Har­ris lead­ing to the chal­lenge be­fore the Court of Ap­peal.

Ap­pel­late Judges Al­lan Men­don­ca, Nolan Bereaux and Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon wrote sep­a­rate but con­sis­tent judg­ments in which they crit­i­cised the JLSC, which is chaired by Archie, for im­prop­er­ly and il­le­gal­ly pres­sur­ing Ay­ers-Cae­sar to re­sign.

In late March, the Privy Coun­cil, led by UK Supreme Court Pres­i­dent Lord Robert Reed, agreed with the lo­cal Ap­peal Court that Ay­ers-Cae­sar was im­prop­er­ly forced to re­sign.

How­ev­er, the British Law Lords ruled that she could have been prop­er­ly sub­ject­ed to a probe un­der Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“Pres­sur­ing a judge to re­sign by hold­ing out the threat of dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings, as the com­mis­sion did in the present case, cir­cum­vents the con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards laid down in sec­tion 137 and un­der­mines their pur­pose,” Lord Reed said.

Un­der that seg­ment of the Con­sti­tu­tion, judges can on­ly be re­moved for mis­be­hav­iour or their in­abil­i­ty to per­form the func­tions of the of­fice due to in­fir­mi­ty of the mind or body.

In such in­stances, a tri­bunal is ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent on the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter in the case of the Chief Jus­tice and the JLSC for judges.

The tri­bunal in­ves­ti­gates and then rec­om­mends whether the Privy Coun­cil should con­sid­er if the judge should be re­moved.

Dur­ing his brief tenure af­ter the Privy Coun­cil weighed in on the case, for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young said he was not con­sid­er­ing ex­er­cis­ing his dis­cre­tion un­der Sec­tion 137.

“At this stage, there is noth­ing be­fore me as Prime Min­is­ter...I have to say that we as the gov­ern­ment are not in­volved in that what­so­ev­er,” Young said.

He al­so point­ed out the case was not against Archie but rather the JLSC.

Af­ter be­ing sworn in, new­ly elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that her Gov­ern­ment would even­tu­al­ly con­sid­er the case and make a de­ter­mi­na­tion.