Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly and two of his col­leagues have won their ap­peal chal­leng­ing a de­ci­sion by the Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) to find them guilty of pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct and rep­ri­mand them. 

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment yes­ter­day, Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh and Ap­pel­late Judges Nolan Bereaux and Maria Wil­son up­held an ap­peal brought by Ram­bal­ly and at­tor­neys Ka­ri­na Singh and De­siree Sankar. 

All three judges wrote con­sis­tent judg­ments in which they strong­ly crit­i­cised the con­duct of the com­mit­tee’s pan­el, which presided over the com­plaint from the trio’s for­mer client Michael Dhanoos­ingh. 

CJ Boodoos­ingh said: “There was an ab­sence of the struc­tured ap­proach to a dis­ci­pli­nary hear­ing that both com­plainant and the at­tor­neys-at-law might have ex­pect­ed to have.” 

Jus­tice Bereaux al­so found that the com­mit­tee was plain­ly wrong. 

“The ap­proach of the com­mit­tee in the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the case against the ap­pel­lants was a mas­ter-class in how a dis­ci­pli­nary tri­bunal should not con­duct it­self,” Jus­tice Bereaux said. 

Jus­tice Wil­son al­so ques­tioned the com­mit­tee’s de­ci­sion to refuse to hear le­git­i­mate ques­tions in re­la­tion to the par­tic­u­lars of Dhanoos­ingh’s com­plaint, which were raised by Ram­bal­ly and Sankar’s at­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and were ul­ti­mate­ly up­held by her and her col­leagues. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Dhanoos­ingh hired the trio to re­place his lawyer in a prop­er­ty dis­pute with his rel­a­tives over own­er­ship of a prop­er­ty in Aranguez. 

He held a half share in the prop­er­ty, with the re­main­der be­ing owned by his moth­er and sib­lings. 

His com­plaint re­lat­ed to a con­sent or­der that was en­tered in the case to give one of his broth­ers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to seek fi­nanc­ing to pur­chase his (Dhanoos­ingh) share in the prop­er­ty. 

Dhanoos­ingh claimed that he was against the move as he knew that his broth­er could not se­cure the fi­nanc­ing and in­stead sug­gest­ed that the prop­er­ty be sold on the open mar­ket, with the pro­ceeds be­ing di­vid­ed. 

His broth­er even­tu­al­ly did not meet the terms of the or­der, and the lawyers sought to com­pel com­pli­ance. 

Af­ter Dhanoos­ingh op­posed the move, Ram­bal­ly and his col­leagues in­formed him that they would with­draw from the case. 

Dhanoos­ingh hired an­oth­er group of lawyers, and some time lat­er, an­oth­er of his sib­lings pur­chased his share in the prop­er­ty. 

He made a com­plaint against the trio, who de­nied any wrong­do­ing and called on him to par­tic­u­larise his com­plaints against them. 

In de­ter­min­ing the com­plaint, the com­mit­tee’s pan­el, which was head­ed by its vice-chair­man Ian Ben­jamin, SC, and in­clud­ed mem­bers Mar­celle Fer­di­nand, Jo-Anne Julien and Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye, re­for­mu­lat­ed Dhanoos­ingh’s com­plaint in re­la­tion to the trio and found them guilty. 

In up­hold­ing the ap­peal, Jus­tice Bereaux not­ed that the pan­el was wrong to have en­ter­tained the ini­tial com­plaint and then sought to cor­rect it. 

“It wrong­ly heard a com­plaint which was so vague and lack­ing in par­tic­u­lar­i­ty that it dis­closed no breach of the Code of Ethics,” he said. 

“It then pro­ceed­ed to for­mu­late a whol­ly new com­plaint which bore no re­la­tion to any­thing said by Mr Dhanoos­ingh,” he added. 

He al­so point­ed out that the pan­el wrong­ly placed the bur­den of proof on the trio and ap­plied a civ­il stand of proof as op­posed to the re­quired crim­i­nal stan­dard for such dis­ci­pli­nary hear­ings. 

“The or­ders of the com­mit­tee against the ap­pel­lants rep­re­sent a se­ri­ous mis­car­riage of jus­tice...The pro­ceed­ings be­fore the com­mit­tee was a med­ley of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties be­gin­ning with the fa­tal­ly flawed com­plaint, which raised no pri­ma fa­cie case for the ap­pel­lants to an­swer,” Jus­tice Bereaux said. 

In his judg­ment, CJ Boodoos­ingh sought to high­light the im­por­tant role of the com­mit­tee to reg­u­late and main­tain high stan­dards of con­duct in the le­gal pro­fes­sion. 

While he com­mend­ed the com­mit­tee’s at­tempt to clar­i­fy the com­plaint as Dhanoos­ingh was not rep­re­sent­ed be­fore them, he sug­gest­ed that it over­stepped its re­mit. 

He rec­om­mend­ed that the com­mit­tee con­sid­er re­fer­ring such com­plainants to the Le­gal Aid Clin­ic of the Hugh Wood­ing Law School. 

Stat­ing that such a process would aid stu­dents in learn­ing the eth­i­cal rules of the le­gal pro­fes­sion, CJ Boodoos­ingh said: “This will go a long way so that the de­fi­cien­cies shown of the present com­plaint may be avoid­ed in the fu­ture.”

“The com­mit­tee, as well in­ten­tioned as the mem­bers of the com­mit­tee may have been here, can­not un­der­take that task it­self as its func­tion is large­ly ad­ju­dica­tive,” he said. 

Ram­bal­ly was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, Nicholas Sant and Ste­fan Ramkissoon. 

Singh was rep­re­sent­ed by Leon Kalicha­ran, while Sankar was rep­re­sent­ed by Ra­jiv Rick­hi and Shve­ta Paras­ram.