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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

PSA contempt motion: Bias claim rejected again

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20140725

For the sec­ond time in less than two weeks, at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke have ac­cused the In­dus­tri­al Court of ap­pear­ing bi­ased.Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes made the state­ment yes­ter­day at the St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, court as he pre­sent­ed an ap­pli­ca­tion to have a five-mem­ber pan­el of judges re­cuse it­self from pre­sid­ing over the con­tempt mo­tion against Duke.Refer­ing to tran­scripts from last week's hear­ings, Mendes said In­dus­tri­al Court pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix had made pro­nounce­ments on key is­sues which were yet to be pre­sent­ed by at­tor­neys.

While he said it ap­peared Thomas-Fe­lix may have pre­judged the case, Mendes was care­ful to note he was not im­put­ing the court was com­pro­mised."It is not if the court is ac­tu­al­ly bi­ased but in­stead a fair-mind­ed and in­formed ob­serv­er would con­clude that there is a re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty the court has pre­judged the is­sue," Mendes said.In re­sponse, lead at­tor­ney for Labour, Small and Mi­cro En­ter­pris­es Min­is­ter Er­rol Mc Leod, who ob­tained an in­junc­tion against the PSA on be­half of Cab­i­net on Ju­ly 3, Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, de­scribed Mendes' ap­pli­ca­tion as "ab­surd and un­rea­son­able.""I don't think there is any­thing that has fall­en from your lips to sup­port the al­le­ga­tion that you have failed to keep an open mind," Mar­tineau said to Thomas-Fe­lix.

Af­ter stand­ing down the hear­ing and briefly dis­cussing the is­sue with her col­leagues, Thomas-Fe­lix an­nounced that the ap­pli­ca­tion was dis­missed, say­ing:"This court has made no judg­ment and has not come to any con­clu­sion. There is no ba­sis for the bench to re­cuse it­self."At the start of the first hear­ing on Ju­ly 11, Mendes claimed the judges were not an im­par­tial tri­bunal as their de­ci­sion might be af­fect­ed by the fact that their tenure in their posts was con­trolled by Cab­i­net. The judges re­ject­ed the claim.Dur­ing yes­ter­day's hear­ing, Mendes was able to com­plete his cross-ex­am­i­na­tion of Mc Leod's first wit­ness, act­ing Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer Ger­ry Downes, and be­gan ques­tion­ing a sec­ond wit­ness Gaek­wad Ra­moutar.

Ra­moutar, the chief in­spec­tor at the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency, tes­ti­fied he had re­viewed his col­leagues' in­spec­tion re­port for the de­part­ment's of­fice at Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, pre­pared a day af­ter the in­junc­tion was grant­ed on Ju­ly 3. While he ad­mit­ted the re­port in­di­cat­ed there were sev­er­al ar­eas of non-com­pli­ance, Ra­moutar ruled the build­ing did not pose any se­ri­ous or im­mi­nent dan­ger to staff.


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