Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A busi­ness­man has with­drawn his law­suit over a pro­tract­ed de­lay in de­cid­ing on his Firearm User’s Li­cence (FUL) ap­pli­ca­tion af­ter Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro agreed to com­plete the process be­fore the end of next month.

The man, whose iden­ti­ty was with­held due to se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns raised by his lawyers, Yves Jacques Nichol­son and Adri­an Thomp­son, with­drew the case yes­ter­day af­ter Gue­var­ro gave the as­sur­ance that he would ren­der a de­ci­sion by Oc­to­ber 20.

While High Court judge Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams ap­proved the with­draw­al ap­pli­ca­tion, she or­dered the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to pay his le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the law­suit.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, the busi­ness­man first ap­plied for an FUL in 2018 and was grant­ed a pro­vi­sion­al FUL in 2021. Al­though he com­plet­ed firearms train­ing as re­quired and was ap­proved by the firearms sec­tion of the Firearms Com­pli­ance Unit, no de­ci­sion on his FUL by the po­lice com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice was com­mu­ni­cat­ed.

He even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed to pur­sue the law­suit af­ter mak­ing nu­mer­ous failed at­tempts to get an up­date on his pend­ing ap­pli­ca­tion.

In the law­suit, the man’s lawyers ad­mit­ted that there is no dead­line for FUL de­ci­sions un­der the Firearms Act but not­ed that a de­ci­sion is re­quired in a rea­son­able time un­der the In­ter­pre­ta­tion Act.

In a press re­lease, Nichol­son not­ed that the law­suit was not con­tend­ing that his client was en­ti­tled to be grant­ed an FUL.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly, what this case was about was not an ab­solute right to bear arms, but about the Com­mis­sion­er’s du­ty to make a time­ly de­ci­sion un­der the Firearms Act,” Nichol­son said.

“Pro­longed ad­min­is­tra­tive de­lay, es­pe­cial­ly in mat­ters of such im­por­tance to an ap­pli­cant’s safe­ty, un­der­mines good gov­er­nance and the rule of law,” he added.

Over the past few years, the TTPS has been in­un­dat­ed with sim­i­lar lit­i­ga­tion from FUL ap­pli­cants over de­lays in de­cid­ing their ap­pli­ca­tions. In Ju­ly, Gue­var­ro an­nounced plans to stream­line the firearm li­cens­ing process and to clear the large back­log of ap­pli­ca­tions he in­her­it­ed when he was ap­point­ed ear­li­er this year.

The TTPS was rep­re­sent­ed by Nao­mi Her­bert and Tson­da Gayle.