Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

For­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar will learn the fate of her law­suit over her short-lived ju­di­cial ap­point­ment on Mon­day.

The date on which the Privy Coun­cil is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er its judg­ment in the fi­nal ap­peal of the case was pub­lished on its web­site yes­ter­day.

The board, led by UK Supreme Court pres­i­dent Lord Robert Reed, re­served its judg­ment af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions in De­cem­ber last year.

In the ap­peal, the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie con­tend­ed that three lo­cal Court of Ap­peal judges got it wrong in Oc­to­ber 2023, when they over­turned the de­ci­sion of now-re­tired judge David Har­ris to dis­miss the case.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar was ap­point­ed a High Court judge in April 2017, but 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.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar then filed the law­suit in which she claimed that she was pres­sured by Archie and the JLSC in­to re­sign­ing un­der the threat that her ap­point­ment would be re­voked.

She claimed that a press re­lease an­nounc­ing her res­ig­na­tion was pre­pared by Ju­di­cia­ry staff be­fore she met with Archie to dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion and that she did not have any in­put.

She al­so con­tend­ed that for­mer pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona, who is al­so a for­mer high court judge, re­fused to in­ter­vene af­ter she in­formed him of Archie’s and the JLSC’s con­duct.

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 se­vere 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 Jus­tice Har­ris, lead­ing to the chal­lenge be­fore the Court of Ap­peal.

In their judg­ment, ap­pel­late judges Al­lan Men­don­ca, Nolan Bereaux, and Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon ruled that the is­sue of Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s case man­age­ment as a mag­is­trate was in­suf­fi­cient for her to be re­moved un­der Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Un­der the seg­ment of the Con­sti­tu­tion, judges can on­ly be re­moved for mis­be­hav­iour or their in­abil­i­ty to per­form the func­tions of the of­fice due to in­fir­mi­ty of the mind or body.

In such in­stances, a tri­bunal is ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent on the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter in the case of the Chief Jus­tice and the JLSC for judges.

The tri­bunal in­ves­ti­gates and then rec­om­mends whether the Privy Coun­cil should con­sid­er if the judge should be re­moved.

The judges 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.

In the event that Ay­ers-Cae­sar suc­cess­ful­ly de­fends the ap­peal, she will be able to fi­nal­ly re­turn to the po­si­tion, as the Ap­peal Court’s de­ci­sion was stayed pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion by the Privy Coun­cil.