DEREK ACHONG

The Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil will to­day be­gin to hear sub­mis­sions in the fi­nal ap­peal over a law­suit brought by for­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar over her short-lived ju­di­cial ap­point­ment.

UK Supreme Court Pres­i­dent Lord Robert Reed is ex­pect­ed to chair the five-mem­ber ap­peal pan­el that will pre­side over the mat­ter in which the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie are claim­ing that the lo­cal Court of Ap­peal got it wrong when it up­held her case in Oc­to­ber, last year.

The ap­peal will com­mence at the UK Supreme Court Build­ing at 11 am UK time (7 am lo­cal time) and will con­tin­ue on Tues­day morn­ing.

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 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 case-load 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.

While Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s case was at a pre­lim­i­nary stage, the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al filed an in­ter­pre­ta­tion law­suit to help de­ter­mine what should hap­pen to her un­fin­ished case-load.

How­ev­er, most of the cas­es were restart­ed and com­plet­ed by Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s suc­ces­sor Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle be­fore the case was de­ter­mined by High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in in 2020. Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle was sub­se­quent­ly ap­point­ed as a High Court Judge.

Jus­tice Gob­in even­tu­al­ly ruled that all the cas­es would have to be restart­ed as there is no le­gal pro­vi­sion for them to be com­plet­ed be­fore a fresh mag­is­trate.

Most, if not all, of the hand­ful of cas­es, which were put on hold pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the case be­fore Gob­in, were sub­se­quent­ly com­plet­ed.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s law­suit was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed by High Court Judge David Har­ris.

In their judg­ment on Oc­to­ber 12, last year, 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.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ron­nie Bisses­sar, SC, Vi­jaya Ma­haraj, and Varin Gopaul-Go­sine.