Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

High Court Judge Bet­sy-Ann Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son has again dis­missed calls for her to re­cuse her­self from a law­suit over the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to in­tro­duce the long-tout­ed T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), de­spite ad­mit­ting links be­tween her hus­band and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Af­ter Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son dis­missed an ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion seek­ing to stay the im­ple­men­ta­tion ear­li­er this month, the le­gal team rep­re­sent­ing Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) mem­ber and cus­toms of­fi­cer, Ter­risa Dho­ray, wrote to her re­quest­ing her re­cusal based on her mar­riage to Se­nior Coun­sel Gilbert Pe­ter­son.

Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son ini­tial­ly re­ject­ed the sug­ges­tions of un­con­scious or per­ceived bias, lead­ing Dho­ray’s le­gal team to file an of­fi­cial ap­pli­ca­tion.

When the ap­pli­ca­tion came up for hear­ing on Fri­day, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son is­sued a writ­ten state­ment to the le­gal teams for both par­ties.

In the state­ment, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son con­firmed all the links ini­tial­ly claimed by Dho­ray’s lawyer Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers.

How­ev­er, she re­peat­ed­ly main­tained that they (the links) had no bear­ing on her abil­i­ty to pre­side over the case im­par­tial­ly.

She said: “Mar­riage has not dimmed my abil­i­ty to ex­er­cise a high de­gree of agency in my per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life.”

Deal­ing specif­i­cal­ly with the claim that her hus­band is Row­ley’s “close friend” and “golf­ing part­ner”, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son ad­mit­ted that her hus­band reg­u­lar­ly plays golf with a group of friends, in­clud­ing Row­ley, at the St An­drew’s Golf Club in Mar­aval.

“I am aware that Mr Pe­ter­son, SC, has no po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions or re­la­tion­ships. I am not aware of him lend­ing po­lit­i­cal sup­port to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), or any per­son or po­lit­i­cal par­ty,” she said.

She al­so ad­mit­ted that her hus­band rep­re­sent­ed Row­ley in sev­er­al court mat­ters.

“I am aware that Mr Pe­ter­son ad­heres to the ‘cab-rank’ rule which pre­vents ad­vo­cate at­tor­neys-at-law from re­fus­ing work be­cause they dis­agree with the ac­tions or views of those seek­ing their ser­vices,” she said.

Ad­dress­ing her hus­band’s role as chair­man of the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty (LAAA) and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT), Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son not­ed he was ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent on the ad­vice of the Gov­ern­ment.

“I am aware that Mr Pe­ter­son’s ap­point­ments are based on his le­gal ex­pe­ri­ence and stand­ing and are not ‘po­lit­i­cal ap­point­ments’,” she said.

She al­so de­nied al­le­ga­tions that her hus­band dis­played bias in his TATT role by cau­tion­ing sev­er­al me­dia com­pa­nies over con­tro­ver­sial state­ments made by po­lit­i­cal fig­ures but not Row­ley.

Turn­ing to the size­able State briefs her hus­band had re­ceived from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son said he was re­mu­ner­at­ed for the le­git­i­mate work he per­formed.

“I am aware that Mr Pe­ter­son’s le­gal coun­sel is sought by gov­ern­ments through­out the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean,” she said.

She al­so ad­mit­ted that her hus­band owns two units in a town house com­plex in To­ba­go where Row­ley re­port­ed­ly al­so owns a unit.

“I am not aware of the po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions of the per­sons who own town hous­es in that de­vel­op­ment,” she said.

She al­so claimed that she did not feel it nec­es­sary to dis­close is­sues sur­round­ing her hus­band when the case was first as­signed to her.

“This has no bear­ing on the set­tled le­gal prin­ci­ples that are re­quired in the pro­ceed­ings,” she said, as she re­ferred to a sep­a­rate case in which she agreed to re­cuse her­self but Ram­lo­gan re­quest­ed that she stay on.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns over her case man­age­ment of the case when it was filed ear­li­er this year, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son claimed that emails were not for­ward­ed to Dho­ray’s le­gal team in a time­ly man­ner, as she was out of the coun­try at the time.

“To my knowl­edge, this mat­ter was dock­et­ed to me. This is an ad­min­is­tra­tive process, over which I have no con­trol,” she said.

The case is sched­uled to come up for a hear­ing next Thurs­day, when the par­ties are ex­pect­ed to present sub­mis­sions on the of­fi­cial re­cusal ap­pli­ca­tion.

About the case

In the sub­stan­tive law­suit, PSA mem­ber and cus­toms of­fi­cer Ter­risa Dho­ray is chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al va­lid­i­ty of the T&T Rev­enue Act 2021.

She con­tends that cer­tain seg­ments of the leg­is­la­tion are un­con­sti­tu­tion­al as they seek to in­ter­fere with the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment of pub­lic ser­vants cur­rent­ly as­signed to the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED) and the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion (IRD).

The law­suit specif­i­cal­ly fo­cus­es on Sec­tion 18 of the leg­is­la­tion which was pro­claimed by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo on April 24.

The sec­tion gives pub­lic ser­vants three months to make a de­ci­sion on their fu­ture em­ploy­ment up­on the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the TTRA.

Af­fect­ed pub­lic ser­vants have the choice to vol­un­tar­i­ly re­sign from the Pub­lic Ser­vice, ac­cept a trans­fer to the TTRA, or be trans­ferred to an­oth­er of­fice in the Pub­lic Ser­vice.

Af­ter the procla­ma­tion, em­ploy­ees of both di­vi­sions were giv­en TTRA em­ploy­ee in­for­ma­tion pack­ages and were giv­en a time­line for the TTRA’s im­ple­men­ta­tion, which was sug­gest­ed to be­gin in Au­gust.

In a de­ci­sion de­liv­ered ear­li­er this month, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son dis­missed an in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion from Dho­ray seek­ing to post­pone the im­ple­men­ta­tion pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of her sub­stan­tive case over the move.

“Af­ter weigh­ing the rel­a­tive risks in grant­i­ng or re­fus­ing the in­ter­im re­lief sought, I have con­clud­ed that the De­fen­dant should not be re­strained, even by in­ter­im re­lief, from ex­er­cis­ing its statu­to­ry pow­ers or do­ing its du­ty to­wards the pub­lic at large,” Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son said.

Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son ruled that Dho­ray had raised a valid case for de­ter­mi­na­tion.

“It is clear that in this case, the is­sues that arise are nei­ther friv­o­lous or vex­a­tious,” she said.

How­ev­er, Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son not­ed that Dho­ray’s chal­lenge over the va­lid­i­ty of the move was not so “firm­ly based” to jus­ti­fy the in­junc­tion.

“To grant in­ter­im re­lief in the cir­cum­stances pre­sent­ed by the par­ties is like­ly to do more harm than good since the De­fen­dant’s case ap­pears to be stronger than that of the Claimant,” Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son said.

She al­so not­ed that Dho­ray’s lawyers failed to prove that she would suf­fer ir­re­me­di­a­ble harm with­out the in­junc­tion in place.

“It is high­ly like­ly that the Claimant, should she suc­ceed at tri­al, would be ad­e­quate­ly com­pen­sat­ed for any loss or prej­u­dice she would have suf­fered by any of the De­fen­dant’s con­tin­ued acts be­tween the ap­pli­ca­tion of in­ter­im re­lief and the cul­mi­na­tion of the tri­al,” she said.

Dho­ray has filed an ur­gent ap­peal over Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son’s de­ci­sion on the in­junc­tion.

The ap­peal is sched­uled to come up for a hear­ing on Ju­ly 4.

PSA un­easy with Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son con­tin­u­ing

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste has main­tained that a move to call on High Court Judge Bet­sy-Ann Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son to re­cuse her­self from a law­suit over the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to in­tro­duce the long-tout­ed T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), was based on con­cerns raised by the union’s mem­bers.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view af­ter Jus­tice Lam­bert-Pe­ter­son is­sued a state­ment re­fus­ing to ac­cede to the re­quest, Bap­tiste said that it (the state­ment) did very lit­tle to al­lay his mem­ber­ship’s con­cerns.

“The judge would have con­firmed our con­cerns...We are con­vinced more than ever that she ought to re­cuse her­self,” Bap­tiste said.

He was care­ful to note that his mem­bers were not al­leg­ing ac­tu­al bias but per­ceived bias based on links be­tween her hus­band Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“We are not in any way mak­ing a state­ment of cer­tain­ty that she would be bi­ased. The con­cern is our mem­bers have ex­pressed a lev­el of dis­com­fort be­cause of the re­la­tion­ship,” he said.

“Jus­tice must not on­ly be done but must ap­pear to be done,” Bap­tiste added.