The Chief of De­fence Staff (CDS) has lost a bid to over­turn a judge’s de­ci­sion to tem­porar­i­ly stop dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings against a sol­dier.

In May, Lance Cor­po­ral Kevon May­ers, through his at­tor­ney Sad­dam Ho­sein, filed an ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion over the pro­ceed­ings be­ing tak­en against him.

Af­ter Jus­tice Kevin Ram­cha­ran grant­ed a tem­po­rary stay pend­ing his fi­nal de­ci­sion on the ap­pli­ca­tion on May 7, lawyers for the CDS and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al filed a pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal.

The ap­peal was dis­missed by Ap­pel­late Judge Maria Wil­son on Mon­day.

Dur­ing a hear­ing, last month, Ho­sein sub­mit­ted that the ap­peal should be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly dis­missed as the State failed to file and serve its sub­mis­sions in sup­port of its le­gal chal­lenge by the dead­line pre­scribed in the Civ­il Pro­ceed­ings Rules 1998.

The move was re­sist­ed by Gre­go­ry Delzin, SC, who led the State’s le­gal team and ap­plied for re­lief from the sanc­tion.

In sub­se­quent writ­ten sub­mis­sions, Ho­sein claimed that the State was aware of the dead­line and in­ten­tion­al­ly breached it.

He not­ed that ju­nior state at­tor­neys in the case claimed that the de­lay was due to them be­ing in sev­er­al oth­er cas­es and one of them be­ing on va­ca­tion.

“At no time, did the ap­pel­lants aver that the miss­ing of the dead­line was as a re­sult of in­ad­ver­tence, as such it can be tak­en that they were ful­ly aware of the date for the dead­line to file writ­ten sub­mis­sion,” he said.

“There is no good ex­pla­na­tion for the breach,” he added.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, Delzin and at­tor­ney Ste­fan Jaikaran de­nied any wrong­do­ing as they not­ed that the de­lay pe­ri­od was three days and not weeks or months.

They claimed that they and their col­leagues were labour­ing to com­ply de­spite short staffing is­sues.

In up­hold­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion to dis­miss the ap­peal, Jus­tice Wil­son ruled that the breach was in­ten­tion­al and there was no good rea­son for such.

De­spite the de­feat in the ap­peal, the stay can still be lift­ed by Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran when he de­liv­ers his fi­nal de­ci­sion on May­ers’ in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion next Mon­day.

The State was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Lianne Thomas, while Saman­tha Singh-Poona ap­peared along­side Ho­sein for May­ers.