Appeal Court reserves judgment

By ONIKA JAMES Friday, July 17 2009

http://www.newsday.co.tt/crime_and_court/0,103919.html 

An Appeal court panel has reserved its judgment in the matter of the Trinidad and Tobago Civil Rights Association and the Cabinet.

Having heard submissions from the association’s attorney, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, SC, and Reginald Armour SC, who is representing the Cabinet, the panel, which comprised of Chief Justice Ivor Archie, and Appeal Judges Peter Jamadar, and Nolan Bereaux, announced that they will rule on the matter by, or before the month of October. The matter stemmed from a 2007, judgment in which High Court Judge, Justice Lennox Deyalsingh declared that, the promise made by the Patrick Manning Government to give sugar workers leases for agricultural lands was enforceable in law. Deyalsingh ordered the Cabinet to grant the leases. The Government appealed the matter on the grounds that Deyalsingh had an apparent bias in the matter, in that prior to being a temporary judge in 2006, he wrote several articles in the newspapers, in which he criticised the Government.

In March 2007, an Appeal Court panel blanked a judicial review which sought to force Justice Deyalsingh to deal with an application to disqualify himself from the Caroni workers judicial review case which was filed in the Court of Appeal.

However, Senior Counsel Maharaj, responded yesterday and said, before Deyalsingh became a judge, he was entitled to criticise the Government and the law, and that the history of the judge or, his political association cannot be a ground of bias. Maharaj, further said, if that was so then, many judges in the Caribbean would not be able to function.