The case man­age­ment sys­tem used by the Supreme Court to as­sign judges to new cas­es may "on the odd oc­ca­sion" ar­bi­trar­i­ly de-se­lect a judge.

This ex­pla­na­tion is giv­en in a state­ment from the Ju­di­cia­ry which was re­leased fol­low­ing a com­plaint from Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad that he had been “bumped off” of the Ju­di­cia­ry’s ran­dom case as­sign­ment sys­tem.

Al­though Jus­tice Seep­er­sad's com­plaint is not re­ferred to di­rect­ly, ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, the au­to­mat­ed sys­tem is sup­port­ed by a Cal­en­dar­ing and Case Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee in the event that a judge needs to re­cuse him or her­self, is un­able to sit for any rea­son af­ter ran­dom as­sign­ment or to ad­dress any prob­lems re­lat­ing to as­sign­ments.

On oc­ca­sions when the sys­tem has de-se­lect­ed a judge the is­sue has been treat­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly "and in no way af­fects the ran­dom as­sign­ment of mat­ters as they con­tin­ued to be as­signed to all oth­er judges on the civ­il dock­et."

The state­ment con­tin­ued: "The Case Man­age­ment Sys­tem has func­tioned to date as orig­i­nal­ly de­signed and op­er­at­ed with­in the lim­its of re­dun­dan­cies nor­mal­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with this type of soft­ware.

"The Ju­di­cia­ry is com­mit­ted to best prac­tices in the de­liv­ery of jus­tice. The in­sti­tu­tion aims to en­sure that mem­bers of the pub­lic have con­tin­u­ing ac­cess to Ju­di­cial Of­fi­cers who are ded­i­cat­ed to the just and ex­pe­di­tious dis­po­si­tion of all mat­ters. Eq­ui­ty and in­tegri­ty re­main among the core prin­ci­ples which in­form and guide the in­sti­tu­tion’s de­ci­sion mak­ing whilst main­tain­ing at all times the in­de­pen­dence of Ju­di­cial Of­fi­cers and the Ju­di­cia­ry as a whole."

Ear­li­er this week, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad com­plained to Jus­tice Ricky Rahim, who chairs the Case Cal­en­dar­ing and Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee af­ter he re­alised that no new cas­es had been as­signed to him for sev­er­al months. Clar­i­fi­ca­tion was sought and act­ing Supreme Court Reg­is­trar Ker­ri-Ann Oliv­er­ie-Stu­art con­firmed that Seep­er­sad had been re­moved.

She al­so al­leged­ly claimed that she could not de­ter­mine the rea­son for Seep­er­sad’s re­moval but not­ed that oth­er judges had ex­pe­ri­enced sim­i­lar is­sues in the past.

Seep­er­sad lat­er wrote to Oliv­er­ie-Stu­art to call for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion as he said that the sit­u­a­tion could lead to al­le­ga­tions of in­ter­nal fo­rum shop­ping.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly far more harm will be oc­ca­sioned to the in­tegri­ty of the in­sti­tu­tion if this sce­nario is not ex­pe­di­tious­ly, sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly en­gaged and the per­cep­tion of pos­si­ble “in­ter­nal fo­rum shop­ping” is left to fes­ter,” he said.

“Whether by ac­ci­dent or de­sign, the sit­u­a­tion which un­fold­ed is un­ten­able."