Derek Achong

A busi­ness­man has lost his law­suit against the Comp­trol­ler of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion for seiz­ing and de­tain­ing his trail­er and trail­er truck with­out ini­ti­at­ing for­fei­ture pro­ceed­ings.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment on Fri­day, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed and Vasheist Kokaram ruled that High Court Judge Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well was cor­rect to refuse Garvin Hold­er leave to pur­sue his ju­di­cial re­view case on the is­sue.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the truck and trail­er were seized by Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cers in No­vem­ber 2016, af­ter they claimed to have found dis­crep­an­cies in the doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to a ship­ping con­tain­er Hold­er was hired to trans­port.

The fol­low­ing month, Hold­er’s at­tor­neys wrote to the Cus­toms Comp­trol­ler to com­mu­ni­cate his in­ten­tion to re­cov­er the truck and trail­er.

They re­ceived a re­ply in­di­cat­ing that the truck and trail­er were deemed to be con­demned, as Hold­er’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion nar­row­ly fell out­side the one-month lim­it for do­ing so un­der Sec­tion 220 of the Cus­toms Act.

In re­ject­ing Hold­er’s ap­pli­ca­tion for leave to pur­sue his case, Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well ruled that it was whol­ly un­mer­i­to­ri­ous, as the word­ing of the leg­is­la­tion deal­ing with the time lim­it was plain and un­am­bigu­ous.

Kokaram, who de­liv­ered the pan­el’s de­ci­sion on the ap­peal, said he and his col­leagues came to the same con­clu­sion based on their analy­sis of the leg­is­la­tion.

“In our view, the statute clear­ly pro­vides for a lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od that is not of­fen­sive to the con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples of due process and ac­cess to jus­tice,” Jus­tice Kokaram said.

The pan­el al­so re­ject­ed Hold­er’s claim that the court should in­ter­pret the leg­is­la­tion to give Comp­trol­ler the dis­cre­tion to con­sid­er chal­lenges over seized goods out­side the lim­it.

“There is no need to graft new pro­vi­sions in­to the leg­is­la­tion which would frus­trate the pur­pose and pol­i­cy of that lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od,” Kokaram said.

De­spite the out­come of the ap­peal, Kokaram not­ed that he and his col­leagues agreed that there may be some sit­u­a­tions in which there would be jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for not abid­ing by the statu­to­ry time lim­it.

Kokaram sug­gest­ed that Par­lia­ment could con­sid­er amend­ing the leg­is­la­tion to ei­ther in­crease the time lim­it or give the Comp­trol­ler the dis­cre­tion sug­gest­ed by Hold­er’s lawyers.

Hold­er was rep­re­sent­ed by Jagdeo Singh Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Ka­ri­na Singh.

Roshan Ram­char­i­tar, Rachel Theophilus and Di­ane Kat­wa­roo rep­re­sent­ed the Comp­trol­ler.