Derek Achong

The State has lost its fi­nal bid to have a High Court judge re­cuse him­self from hear­ing the High­way Reroute Move­ment (HRM) con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion law­suit, with the Privy Coun­cil yes­ter­day re­fus­ing to grant it leave to pur­sue its ap­peal on the is­sue.How­ev­er, the HRM's le­gal vic­to­ry does not stand to se­ri­ous­ly af­fect the sta­tus of the case as hear­ings be­fore Jus­tice James Aboud were un­fazed while the ap­peal ap­pli­ca­tion was be­ing de­ter­mined by the British-based court.

As part of its de­ci­sion not to grant the leave, the pan­el of judges al­so or­dered the State to pay the HRM's le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion.The re­cusal re­quest was cen­tred around Aboud al­leged ap­par­ent bias in the case be­cause of his broth­er Gary's role as sec­re­tary of en­vi­ron­men­tal group ,Fish­er­man and Friends of the Sea, an or­gan­i­sa­tion which the State con­tend­ed was con­nect­ed with the HRM and shared its views.

A hear­ing was held si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly be­fore Aboud in Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day morn­ing dur­ing which he heard sub­mis­sions from the State over an in­ter­im in­junc­tion stop­ping con­struc­tion work at the dis­put­ed Debe to Mon De­sir seg­ment of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion project.The group sought the ur­gent in­junc­tion ear­li­er this month, when the State was due to re­spond to a sim­i­lar ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion filed al­most four months ago.

The ini­tial ap­pli­ca­tion was blight­ed by sev­er­al de­lays, in­clud­ing the State's re­cusal ap­pli­ca­tion which was dis­missed by both Aboud and the Ap­peal Court be­fore it was ap­pealed to the Privy Coun­cil.The group's lead at­tor­ney, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, had said his clients could not wait for the first ap­pli­ca­tion to be de­ter­mined, as the State had ramped up con­struc­tion at the site since the be­gin­ning of this month and the project might reach an ad­vanced stage while the ini­tial ap­pli­ca­tion was be­ing de­ter­mined.

Ma­haraj was present in the Privy Coun­cil for the de­ci­sion.Re­spond­ing to the re­quest for the in­junc­tion, the State's lead at­tor­ney, Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, raised a se­ries of is­sues which he said pre­clud­ed the group from be­ing able to seek the re­lief.He said: "I might be wrong but this claim can not suc­ceed... every­thing is over­whelm­ing­ly in our favour."

While ques­tion­ing the tim­ing of the group's ap­pli­ca­tion, Mar­tineau not­ed that al­though the group was aware that con­struc­tion works were tak­ing place since No­vem­ber 2012, it on­ly sought to stop the work al­most 13 months lat­er.The HRM's le­gal team is ex­pect­ed to re­spond to Mar­tineau when the case con­tin­ues next week Thurs­day.