For­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar will have to wait un­til next year to learn the fate of her law­suit against Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC), over their al­leged­ly pres­sur­ing her to re­sign as a High Court judge in 2017.

Af­ter the cross-ex­am­i­na­tion of the JLSC’s three re­main­ing wit­ness­es was com­plet­ed vir­tu­al­ly be­fore Jus­tice David Har­ris yes­ter­day, at­tor­neys for the par­ties re­quest­ed dates in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary next year to file their re­spec­tive writ­ten sub­mis­sions.

The par­ties re­quest­ed a date to present sup­ple­men­tary oral sub­mis­sions. Har­ris de­clined, say­ing he would on­ly fa­cil­i­tate this if he thought it was re­quired af­ter con­sid­er­ing the writ­ten sub­mis­sions.

Har­ris is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er his judge­ment on a date to be fixed once the fil­ings are com­plet­ed with­in the set time frame.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s hear­ing, Har­ris heard ev­i­dence from the JLSC’s for­mer sec­re­tary Coomarie Goolab­s­ingh, Archie’s for­mer ex­ec­u­tive sec­re­tary Sher­lanne Pierre and for­mer High Court reg­is­trar Jade Ro­driguez.

Goolab­s­ingh record­ed min­utes of an emer­gency meet­ing held by the JLSC to dis­cuss the is­sues caused by the part-heard cas­es Ay­ers-Cae­sar left be­hind up­on tak­ing up the ap­point­ment in April 2017.

While be­ing quizzed by Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s lawyer Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Goolals­ingh ad­mit­ted she mis­tak­en­ly wrote that the meet­ing end­ed at 3.45 when it in fact it end­ed three hours ear­li­er. She ad­mit­ted that al­though the er­ror had been point­ed out to her, she did not seek to amend her af­fi­davit to ad­dress it. She al­so claimed she did not have any in­put in the meet­ing and mere­ly played the role of a scribe.

Pierre, who has since been ap­point­ed at High Court Mas­ter, claimed she as­sist­ed Ay­ers-Cae­sar in prepar­ing and print­ing her res­ig­na­tion let­ter to be de­liv­ered to then-Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona and a press re­lease.

Pierre ad­mit­ted she re­ceived a draft of the press re­lease from the Ju­di­cia­ry’s Court Pro­to­col and In­for­ma­tion De­part­ment but claimed she of­fered Ay­ers-Cae­sar an op­por­tu­ni­ty to al­ter it.

“She looked at it and made changes, I print­ed it for her and she said ‘yes’. I told her the Chief Jus­tice would al­so be prepar­ing a re­lease and she should look at it first. She said ‘no’, leave it as it is and go ahead with it,” Pierre said.

Pierre claimed that she could not re­mem­ber con­sol­ing an emo­tion­al Ay­ers-Cae­sar, or telling her a per­son­al sto­ry in an at­tempt to com­fort her.

How­ev­er, Ro­driguez, who is cur­rent­ly a tem­po­rary High Court Judge, gave a slight­ly dif­fer­ent ver­sion of the events.

Ro­driguez, who claimed she was in­vit­ed to the meet­ing by Pierre to serve as a wit­ness, claimed she did see Pierre con­sol­ing Ay­ers-Cae­sar and shar­ing a per­son­al sto­ry. She claimed that when Ay­ers-Cae­sar was giv­en the doc­u­ments to sign, she mut­tered “what­ev­er”. She al­so ad­mit­ted that she had con­cerns about the con­tents of the orig­i­nal ver­sion of the press re­lease.

Ma­haraj asked: “You told her (Ay­ers-Cae­sar) that it made her look like a liar and you had se­ri­ous prob­lems with it.”

Ro­driguez an­swered: “Yes I did.”

Ma­haraj asked: “She (Pierre) had told you it had been worse and that she had to “soft­en” it up.”

Ro­driguez an­swered: “Yes, she did.”

Ay­ers-Cae­sar is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Ron­nie Bisses­sar and Vi­jaya Ma­haraj.

Archie and the JLSC are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, Ian Ben­jamin, SC, Ian Roach and Mar­celle Fer­di­nand.

Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, Ravi Nan­ga, Ravi Heffes-Doon, Zel­i­ca Haynes-Soo Hon and Di­ane Kat­wa­roo are rep­re­sent­ing the AG’s Of­fice.