Derek Achong

Ap­peal Court Judge Pe­ter Ja­madar re­ceived glow­ing trib­utes from his col­leagues and lawyers yes­ter­day, as he made his fi­nal court ap­pear­ance be­fore tak­ing up a post at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) next month.

Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sell Mar­tineau, who was the most se­nior lawyer present, kicked off the im­promp­tu com­mem­o­ra­tive hear­ing and con­grat­u­lat­ed Ja­madar on his el­e­va­tion to the CCJ.

“Our loss is of tremen­dous gain to the CCJ. He (Ja­madar) will be recog­nised for his eru­dite ques­tions and get­ting to the heart of the mat­ter. No one can ques­tion his in­tegri­ty or his sin­cer­i­ty,” Mar­tineau said.

How­ev­er, Mar­tineau, who Ja­madar sub­se­quent­ly de­scribed as his “le­gal ad­vi­sor and con­fi­dante”, said he was sad­dened by the news.

“It has been rather en­joy­able for me in a sense, but al­so sad. I am not a vis­i­tor to the CCJ, so it may be the last time for me to ap­pear be­fore Jus­tice Ja­madar,” Mar­tineau said.

Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj said that there was no doubt that Ja­madar made an in­deli­ble con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of the law.

“No one would feel that they didn’t get a fair deal in court,” Ma­haraj said.

Ja­madar left Ma­haraj and al­most every­one in the court­room chuck­ling as he re­mind­ed him of an in­ci­dent in 1999, where Ma­haraj de­scribed him as the worst judge in T&T while he served as at­tor­ney gen­er­al.

Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan not­ed that Ja­madar was a men­tor to young lawyers and he of­ten of­fered con­struc­tive crit­i­cism and ad­vice. Ram­lo­gan al­so de­scribed Ja­madar as the most “cul­tur­al­ly sen­si­tive” of all judges.

In his con­tri­bu­tion, Se­nior Coun­sel Ian Ben­jamin sought to pre­dict that Ja­madar would be the first of sev­er­al Ap­peal Court Judges, cur­rent­ly sit­ting, who may be even­tu­al­ly se­lect­ed to sit on the CCJ. He al­so ex­pressed hope that this coun­try would make the re­gion­al court, its fi­nal ap­pel­late court.

“It is hoped that at some time the politi­cians would get their act to­geth­er and they would de­cide that con­fi­dence in our ju­di­cia­ry is a ne­ces­si­ty,” Ben­jamin said.

When giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond, Ja­madar thanked them for their en­cour­ag­ing words as he re­layed anec­dotes of his in­ter­ac­tions with them.

He al­so en­cour­aged them to work to­geth­er to con­tin­ue to de­vel­op the pro­fes­sion.

“You all must not be ad­ver­saries out­side this court. You do not do the pro­fes­sion jus­tice,” Ja­madar said.

He made spe­cial men­tion of de­ceased Se­nior Coun­sel Son­ny Ma­haraj and Guyanese Queen’s Coun­sel Sir Fen­ton Ram­sa­hoye, who he both de­scribed as men­tors.

Ja­madar al­so paid trib­ute to for­mer Chief Jus­tice Michael de la Bastide, who he said was vi­tal to in­spir­ing him and oth­er se­nior judges cur­rent­ly sit­ting in the Ju­di­cia­ry.

“Michael brought us to­geth­er, he sat with us, shared with us and nev­er wa­vered from the com­mit­ment to the group,” an emo­tion­al Ja­madar said.

Ja­madar made a pass­ing cryp­tic com­ment on the “cur­rent state of af­fairs” with­in the Ju­di­cia­ry.

“It is what it is and you know what it is,” Ja­madar said.

In light of his com­ment, Ja­madar al­so sought to de­fend some of his col­leagues.

“The group that start­ed with me are men and women of in­de­pen­dence and in­tegri­ty, who served their coun­try fear­less­ly,” Ja­madar said.