High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad has moved to re­solve a le­gal dis­pute with­in the Nurs­ing Coun­cil, which had the po­ten­tial to put the reg­is­tra­tion of new nurs­es in jeop­ardy. 

Dur­ing a hear­ing at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, on Mon­day, Seep­er­sad grant­ed a se­ries of in­ter­im de­c­la­ra­tions in a law­suit brought by the coun­cil's for­mer pres­i­dent David Mur­phy over a re­cent move to oust him. 

Seep­er­sad ruled that the Nurs­ing Per­son­nel Act makes no pro­vi­sion for the coun­cil mem­bers to stay be­yond their three-year term and that the coun­cil could not make de­ci­sions un­til it had a prop­er quo­rum. 

Seep­er­sad al­so ruled that con­trary to what was claimed by lawyers for the Min­istry of Health, there is no statu­to­ry pro­vi­sion bar­ring Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh from ap­point­ing six mem­bers of the coun­cil. 

The Min­istry had claimed that pre­vi­ous Health Min­is­ters would usu­al­ly wait un­til nine oth­er mem­bers are elect­ed by mem­ber or­gan­i­sa­tions, which form part of the coun­cil, be­fore mak­ing the ap­point­ments. 

Seep­er­sad said that if the six ap­point­ments are made, the coun­cil will have a prop­er quo­rum of sev­en in­clud­ing the Chief Nurs­ing Of­fi­cer, who serves as an ex-of­fi­cio mem­ber. 

The quo­rum would then be al­lowed to per­form the coun­cil's du­ties in reg­is­ter­ing nurs­es and ad­min­is­ter­ing nurs­ing ex­am­i­na­tions un­til the is­sues with the elect­ed mem­bers are re­solved. 

In the law­suit, Mur­phy con­tend­ed that his fel­low coun­cil mem­bers did not have the au­thor­i­ty to call an 807th or­di­nary meet­ing on Au­gust 26, dur­ing which he was oust­ed and Chris Craig­well was ap­point­ed as in­ter­im pres­i­dent. 

They al­so al­leged that the leg­is­la­tion does pro­vide for an in­ter­im pres­i­dent of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, which is man­dat­ed to reg­is­ter nurs­ing per­son­nel and sets stan­dards for the ed­u­ca­tion and prac­tice of nurs­es and mid­wives in T&T. 

In his af­fi­davit filed in sup­port of his law­suit, Mur­phy claimed that his fel­low coun­cil mem­bers' de­ci­sion to pass a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in him was based on the fact that he wrote to Deyals­ingh to com­plain over their in­abil­i­ty to com­plete the out­stand­ing elec­tions of the elect­ed mem­bers of the coun­cil.

Mur­phy, the prin­ci­pal of the School of Nurs­ing at the St Ann's Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal and a Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist pas­tor, claimed that elec­tions were held af­ter the coun­cil's term ex­pired but the re­sults have nev­er been re­leased. 

As part of his or­ders, Seep­er­sad gave Mur­phy's lawyers in­struc­tions on fil­ing sub­mis­sions in the sub­stan­tive case over the move to oust him. The cas­es will come up for hear­ing on Oc­to­ber 7. 

Mur­phy is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ger­ald Ramdeen, Dayadai Har­ri­paul, and Umesh Ma­haraj, while Elaine Green is rep­re­sent­ing the coun­cil.