CHARLES KONG SOO

charles.kong­soo@guardian.co.tt

The peo­ple at the late for­mer judge, min­is­ter and MP Her­bert Vol­ney's pri­vate fu­ner­al, with mod­est num­bers at Bel­grove's Fu­ner­al Home in Tacarigua, were the "cho­sen friends" he had hand­picked to at­tend.

In his eu­lo­gy on Sat­ur­day, re­tired Ap­peal Court Judge Jus­tice Stan­ley John re­vealed that Vol­ney was a stick­ler for de­tail plan­ning for his fu­ner­al years in ad­vance.

He said Vol­ney had left in­struc­tions with his wife, Tri­cia, that when he passed, he want­ed his friends to be present at his fu­ner­al.

John said, "While rum­mag­ing through some doc­u­ments she found a list writ­ten a few years ago of friends he want­ed to be here.

Retired Judge Stanley John delivers the eulogy for his friend Herbert Volney.

"You and I, my dear friends, are the cho­sen friends of Her­bert Vol­ney."

Some of the at­ten­dees were Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, for­mer pres­i­dent and High Court judge An­tho­ny Car­mona, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Sophia Chote, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Car­los John, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er, Fr Em­manuel Pierre, fam­i­ly and friends.

John said "Her­bert's first love was his fam­i­ly, he loved his chil­dren. He al­ways told me he want­ed to be the best fa­ther pos­si­ble, and to a large ex­tent, I think Her­bert suc­ceed­ed.

"I al­ways felt that Vol­ney's skill and abil­i­ty as a judge was nev­er ful­ly un­der­stood, ap­pre­ci­at­ed and recog­nised by those re­spon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing per­sons to the high­er ju­di­cia­ry. His de­ci­sions were al­ways based on an un­der­stand­ing of the law and a sense of fair­ness.

"Vol­ney was ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing some of the finest le­gal de­ci­sions of high qual­i­ty, even when the is­sues be­fore him were in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­leng­ing."

He said he got to know Vol­ney short­ly af­ter he joined the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) af­ter be­ing called to the bar.

John added that Vol­ney served with dis­tinc­tion in the Of­fice of the DPP for sev­er­al years.

He de­scribed him as an ex­cel­lent pros­e­cu­tor and a fierce­ly in­de­pen­dent man and, above all, he was a fair per­son.

Af­ter sev­er­al years there, he said, Vol­ney re­signed hav­ing at­tained the Of­fice of As­sis­tant DPP and went in­to pri­vate prac­tice short­ly af­ter. John shared that they both were in­vit­ed to join the bench of the Ju­di­cia­ry of T&T.

President of the Law Association Sophia Chote speaking at former judge and MP Herbert Volney’s funeral at Belgrove’s Chapel in Tacarigua yesterday.

John said they were ap­point­ed judges the same day by the late pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate and then Ag pres­i­dent Em­manuel Carter and their friend­ship blos­somed.

He said when Vol­ney left the Ju­di­cia­ry he en­tered the world of pol­i­tics, and though this was short-lived, he nev­er­the­less left his mark in the po­lit­i­cal are­na.

Vol­ney, who served as MP for St Joseph, was for­mer min­is­ter of jus­tice in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment. John said he served his con­stituents self­less­ly and with com­pas­sion.

He said that it was an open se­cret that Vol­ney suf­fered a great deal of pub­lic crit­i­cism over a par­tic­u­lar piece of leg­is­la­tion which he pi­lot­ed in the Par­lia­ment, re­fer­ring to a clause in the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act, which was passed es­tab­lish­ing a statute of lim­i­ta­tion for al­leged crimes more than ten years old.

John said he sin­gu­lar­ly paid the price for what was now known as "col­lec­tive Cab­i­net re­spon­si­bil­i­ty" and his ca­reer in pol­i­tics was in the end some­what tur­bu­lent.

Vol­ney was lat­er cre­mat­ed.