DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) has sought in­de­pen­dent ad­vice on al­le­ga­tions over the con­duct of Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and for­mer chief mag­is­trate and now High Court Judge Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar in a case re­lat­ed to her short-lived ju­di­cial ap­point­ment in 2017.

The as­so­ci­a­tion made the state­ment in a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day.

It said: “LATT wish­es to ad­vise the pub­lic of its de­ci­sion to seek the ad­vice of re­gion­al se­nior coun­sel on the is­sues sur­round­ing the al­le­ga­tions and finds made in re­la­tion to the Ho­n­ourable Chief Jus­tice and the Ho­n­ourable Jus­tice Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar in or­der to guide it in de­ter­min­ing the most ap­pro­pri­ate course of ac­tion.

“The Coun­cil wish­es to em­pha­sise that it does not have or claim the lux­u­ry of re­spond­ing to events which im­pact pub­lic con­fi­dence in the Ju­di­cia­ry with­out calm and thought­ful de­lib­er­a­tion.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion ad­mit­ted that part of its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­mote, main­tain, and sup­port the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice and the rule of law un­der the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act is to re­spond to al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct made against ju­di­cial of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the le­gal pro­fes­sion.

It said that pro­nounce­ments made in a law­suit brought by Ay­ers-Cae­sar, who claimed that she was pres­sured by Archie and the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC) to re­sign over the cas­es she left un­fin­ished when she took up the pro­mo­tion, had been the sub­ject of “anx­ious” con­sid­er­a­tion by its Coun­cil.

Stat­ing that it re­mains com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing the in­tegri­ty of the Ju­di­cia­ry and the pro­fes­sion, it said: “It will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor these de­vel­op­ments and en­gage rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers to en­sure that all mat­ters are ad­dressed in a man­ner con­sis­tent with due process, le­gal ethics, and the prin­ci­ples of fun­da­men­tal jus­tice.”

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.

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 had 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 all 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.

While 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 it ruled that she could have been prop­er­ly sub­ject­ed to a probe un­der Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

The judg­ment led to calls for Archie to re­sign or be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing on Thurs­day af­ter­noon, Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young stat­ed that he was not cur­rent­ly 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.

“What we saw com­ing out of the Privy Coun­cil was a de­ci­sion deal­ing with the JLSC, an in­de­pen­dent body, and its treat­ment of an of­fi­cer which fell un­der its purview,” he said.

Young said that he would care­ful­ly con­sid­er any ma­te­r­i­al which may war­rant a probe that may be pre­sent­ed to him and would on­ly make a de­ci­sion af­ter seek­ing in­de­pen­dent le­gal ad­vice.

“I cer­tain­ly won’t be ad­vis­ing my­self,” he said.