Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes said yes­ter­day it was im­por­tant to recog­nise that Ven­tour has tak­en re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. He said this was both for not alert­ing the Pres­i­dent to the fact that he was leav­ing the ju­di­cia­ry with out­stand­ing judg­ments, which would have meant that at some point he would have to re­sign from the com­mis­sion to de­liv­er those judg­ments, and for not hav­ing had the fore­sight to ap­pre­ci­ate he would in­deed have to do so.

"I can't see that there would have been any im­prop­er mo­tive on any­one's part in pro­ceed­ing in this way, and for my part I am pre­pared to ac­cept that this episode is ex­plain­able by sim­ple hu­man er­ror," said Mendes."I al­so think that it is fair­ly ob­vi­ous that, once faced with the dilem­ma, the plan was for Jus­tice Ven­tour to re­sign his po­si­tion on the com­mis­sion so that he could de­liv­er his judg­ments, and then be re-ap­point­ed to the com­mis­sion at a lat­er date."

He de­scribed Ven­tour as a "clear as­set" to the com­mis­sion, adding that would have been a pity if his ser­vices were lost be­cause of the "ini­tial, ap­par­ent­ly in­ad­ver­tent, er­ror in his ap­point­ment."He added, "It is, how­ev­er, fair to say that once the er­ror was dis­cov­ered, good gov­er­nance and trans­paren­cy de­mand­ed that a full ex­pla­na­tion be giv­en for what had oc­curred and what was planned in or­der to cor­rect it. That course of ac­tion would cer­tain­ly have fore­stalled much of the jus­ti­fi­able me­dia cu­rios­i­ty which stud­ied si­lence has gen­er­at­ed."

He said Ven­tour was al­so right to den­i­grate the prac­tice of al­low­ing judges to re­tire with out­stand­ing judg­ments. When that hap­pens, Mendes said, there is much less con­trol over time­ly de­liv­ery, and un­com­fort­able ques­tions arise as to the ca­pac­i­ty in which the re­tired judge is act­ing when he or she is en­gaged in judg­ment-writ­ing."As with all of­fices of high con­sti­tu­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance, it is so im­por­tant to en­sure that the let­ter of the law is fol­lowed, for that usu­al­ly means that its spir­it is al­so be­ing ho­n­oured," Mendes added.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal said up­on Ven­tour's res­ig­na­tion, his tem­po­rary ap­point­ment should have been made im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter he left the bench so that he could com­plete the judg­ments.In re­sponse to Ven­tour's let­ter, she said this was laud­able and she sup­port­ed his rec­om­men­da­tions on good gov­er­nance where a judge's re­tire­ment was im­mi­nent.

On the is­sue of writ­ing judg­ments, See­ta­hal said, "I think, how­ev­er, his ac­count leaves open the sug­ges­tion of writ­ing judg­ments. Should a for­mer judge be writ­ing judg­ments af­ter he has re­tired? He should be giv­en the time. That con­sti­tutes ju­di­cial work."

The cas­es

Ven­tour said at the time of his re­tire­ment the judg­ments were KGC Co Ltd v Guyadeen Per­sad, Ameena Home­ward v the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of T&T, and Mo­ra Ven Hold­ings Ltd, Mo­ra Oil Ven­tures Ltd and George Nicholas v Kr­ish­na Per­sad and As­so­ciates Ltd and Dr Kr­ish­na Per­sad.