Geisha Kow­lessar

For­mer High Court judge and deputy chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, Se­bas­t­ian Ven­tour, has ac­cept­ed blame for his fail­ure to tell Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona he had three out­stand­ing court judg­ments be­fore tak­ing up the po­si­tion on the com­mis­sion.He said this was an over­sight which he has re­gret­ted.

In Feb­ru­ary Ven­tour re­signed, af­ter serv­ing for sev­en months on the com­mis­sion, to be reap­point­ed a judge for one day to de­liv­er the judg­ments. He was lat­er reap­point­ed to the com­mis­sion. In a three-page let­ter sent yes­ter­day, Ven­tour made the com­ment in re­sponse to an ed­i­to­r­i­al in the T&T Guardian which was pub­lished on March 30. The Guardian had been seek­ing com­ments from him since he stepped down and was reap­point­ed.

"On re­flec­tion, I con­sid­er it was my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to have brought the is­sue of the out­stand­ing judg­ments to the at­ten­tion of the Pres­i­dent at the ma­te­r­i­al time," Ven­tour wrote. "That I did not was an over­sight which I re­gret, but giv­en the long his­to­ry of re­call this did not ap­pear to be a prob­lem at the time. Lat­er as a mem­ber of the com­mis­sion I dis­cov­ered that I had to re­sign from the com­mis­sion and be reap­point­ed as a judge in or­der to de­liv­er the out­stand­ing judg­ments."

Ven­tour said for as many years as he could re­mem­ber, judges had re­tired from the Ju­di­cia­ry and been reap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent, on the ad­vice of the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, for a very short pe­ri­od, some­times for a day, to de­liv­er out­stand­ing judg­ments.

There is much prece­dent for that prac­tice, Ven­tour said. Say­ing nev­er­the­less–and de­spite his own case–that he be­lieved the prac­tice should cease, Ven­tour said good gov­er­nance with­in the Ju­di­cia­ry de­mands that in cas­es where a judge's re­tire­ment is im­mi­nent, no new cas­es should be as­signed to the judge's dock­et with­in six months of his or her re­tire­ment date.

He said while he was at the com­mis­sion he was not do­ing any ju­di­cial work, as he was not func­tion­ing in the ca­pac­i­ty of a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer. Ven­tour said if he had not com­plet­ed the judg­ments, the three out­stand­ing cas­es he had be­fore re­tire­ment would have had to be done afresh, and he had a moral oblig­a­tion to com­plete them.

"I would ar­gue that I could not have been act­ing as a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer fol­low­ing my re­tire­ment from the bench. I be­lieve I had a moral com­mit­ment to com­plete and de­liv­er the said judg­ments and that I pro­ceed­ed to do," Ven­tour said.He said he con­tin­ued to do le­gal re­search, and not ju­di­cial work, while he was a mem­ber of the com­mis­sion.

Ven­tour said he has been a lec­tur­er at the Hugh Wood­ing Law School for many years and was do­ing le­gal re­search dai­ly, whether for the pur­pose of teach­ing or oth­er­wise. On the ab­sence of his writ­ten judg­ment in the Mo­ra Ven case from the Supreme Court Web site, Ven­tour said he had no an­swer and on­ly the court's li­brar­i­an could pro­vide a prop­er ex­pla­na­tion."I my­self have not checked the Web site but there is no mys­tery there as has been al­leged," he said.

"There is noth­ing to hide. I agree that the pub­lic should have ac­cess to the writ­ten judg­ment, es­pe­cial­ly young lawyers who are par­tic­u­lar­ly en­gaged in the study and the prac­tice of cor­po­rate law."

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What the ed­i­to­r­i­al said

The Sun­day Guardian ed­i­to­r­i­al raised ques­tions on Ven­tour's stay­ing mum."He was vo­cal last year Ju­ly in jus­ti­fy­ing why he should not have re­signed from the Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion while tak­ing up an ap­point­ment with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. A month lat­er he re­signed from the Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion and no rea­son was giv­en.

"In Feb­ru­ary this year, he sud­den­ly re­signed from the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to be­come a judge for a day to hand down his rul­ing in three mat­ters. He will not an­swer whether he was do­ing ju­di­cial work while on the job with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and he will not an­swer ques­tions re­lat­ed to whether he was si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in­volved in han­dling any mat­ters in­volv­ing George Nicholas III in­side the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion while writ­ing up a judg­ment for the High Court in­volv­ing Mr Nicholas," the ed­i­to­r­i­al said.

It al­so ques­tioned why on­ly two of the three judg­ments de­liv­ered by Ven­tour were post­ed on the court's Web site, and the one in­volv­ing Nicholas was not.