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Friday, January 3, 2025

Marcia loses forced resignation lawsuit against CJ

by

1182 days ago
20211008
FLASHBACK April 2017 : Chief Justice Ivor Archie looks as Marcia Ayers-Caesar takes the oath of office as a judge at the Office Of The President, St Ann’s.

FLASHBACK April 2017 : Chief Justice Ivor Archie looks as Marcia Ayers-Caesar takes the oath of office as a judge at the Office Of The President, St Ann’s.

Shirley Bahadur

Suzanne Shep­pard

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

A law­suit filed by for­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar against Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC) in which she claimed she was forced to re­sign as a High Court judge in 2017 has been dis­missed.

In a 146-page rul­ing yes­ter­day, Jus­tice David C. Har­ris said Ay­ers-Cae­sar was treat­ed just­ly and fair­ly by the JLSC, for­mer Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona and Chief Jus­tice Archie in ac­cor­dance with her en­ti­tle­ments un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion. He al­so ruled that her de­ci­sion to re­sign was vol­un­tary.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar, who was rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, claimed in her law­suit that Car­mona re­fused to in­ter­vene af­ter she told him about Archie and the JLSC’s con­duct. She said the JLSC un­law­ful­ly de­cid­ed on April 27, 2017, to re­move her as a new­ly ap­point­ed judge by procur­ing her res­ig­na­tion and her re­turn to the mag­is­te­r­i­al bench to com­plete sev­er­al part-heard mat­ters.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar was ap­point­ed a High Court Judge in April 2017 but two weeks lat­er, af­ter pub­lic crit­i­cism over the back­log in cas­es she had left be­hind in the Mag­is­trates’ Court, she re­signed. She con­tend­ed that Car­mona and the JLSC had full knowl­edge that her res­ig­na­tion was pro­cured un­der threat of dis­missal and that a press re­lease signed by her was ob­tained sim­i­lar­ly.

The re­lief she sought in­clud­ed re­in­state­ment as a High Court Judge and an award of dam­ages.

How­ev­er, Jus­tice Har­ris said Car­mona was un­aware of the cir­cum­stances that Ay­ers-Cae­sar al­leged had caused her to re­sign.

“The Pres­i­dent was not spo­ken to by the Chief Jus­tice ear­li­er in the day and pri­or to the JLSC meet­ing or at any time of mat­ters con­cern­ing what the claimant has plead­ed amount­ed to the un­law­ful pro­cure­ment of her res­ig­na­tion,” he said.

“The Pres­i­dent is not li­able for the acts of the Chief Jus­tice if he (the Chief Jus­tice) did not act for the JLSC. The Pres­i­dent did not im­prop­er­ly, un­fair­ly and un­law­ful­ly de­cline to con­sid­er the claimant’s said let­ter re­quest and/or to ac­cede to the claimant’s let­ter re­quest to him to re­voke her res­ig­na­tion and to re­in­state her as a High Court Judge.”

Jus­tice Har­ris al­so found that the for­mer chief mag­is­trate’s law­suit was “by no means a friv­o­lous one” be­cause the JLSC’s han­dling of the en­tire process lead­ing up to Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s res­ig­na­tion was not above all re­proach.

“It was clum­sy in some re­spects, al­beit in the end re­tain­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions to which the hold­er of ju­di­cial of­fice is en­ti­tled,” he said.

“A cer­tain clar­i­ty has been brought to the area of law and to the func­tions and ex­tent of the pow­ers of the var­i­ous en­ti­ties re­ferred to above (par­tic­u­lar­ly the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent), that found them­selves as par­ties to this ac­tion. This case has ad­vanced the ju­rispru­dence in Trinidad and To­ba­go in im­por­tant re­spects.”

Ay­ers-Cae­sar was or­dered to pay 50 per cent of the costs in the law­suit which will be as­sessed by the Mas­ter/Reg­is­trar of the High Court.

In a state­ment fol­low­ing the judge­ment, Ma­haraj said there would be an ap­peal of the de­ci­sion as far as the Privy Coun­cil, if nec­es­sary. He said an ap­pli­ca­tion would be made to the Court of Ap­peal for the mat­ter to be ex­pe­dit­ed “so that the pub­lic could have the ben­e­fit of the rel­e­vant de­ci­sions in this mat­ter as a mat­ter of ur­gency.”

Ay­ers-Cae­sar was al­so rep­re­sent­ed in the law­suit by Ron­nie Bisses­sar and Vi­jaya Ma­haraj, while Archie and the JLSC were rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, Ian Ben­jamin, SC, Ian Roach and Mar­celle Fer­di­nand.

Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, Ravi Nan­ga, Ravi Heffes-Doon, Zel­i­ca Haynes-Soo Hon and Di­ane Kat­wa­roo ap­peared on be­half of the AG’s Of­fice.


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