Derek Achong

The Court of Ap­peal has re­served its de­ci­sion in an ap­peal over the dis­missal of for­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s law­suit against the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC), over be­ing al­leged­ly pres­sured in­to re­sign­ing as a High Court Judge in 2017.

Ap­pel­late Judges Al­lan Men­don­ca, Nolan Bereaux and Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon re­served their judg­ment af­ter hear­ing lengthy sub­mis­sions in the ap­peal dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing on Tues­day.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on Ay­ers-Cae­sar’s be­half, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, claimed that High Court Judge David Har­ris got it wrong when he re­ject­ed her case in Oc­to­ber last year.

He claimed that Har­ris made sev­er­al er­rors in law when he analysed the ev­i­dence in the case and ruled that the JLSC did not ap­ply un­law­ful pres­sure on Ay­ers-Cae­sar through its chair­man, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie.

“This ap­peal rais­es im­por­tant pub­lic law prin­ci­ples over the in­de­pen­dence of the Ju­di­cia­ry and the con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tee of se­cu­ri­ty of tenure for judges,” Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj claimed that Har­ris came to the find­ing de­spite be­ing con­front­ed with ev­i­dence that a res­ig­na­tion let­ter and press re­lease an­nounc­ing it were draft­ed hours be­fore Ay­ers-Cae­sar met with Archie and even­tu­al­ly ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion.

“The fact that it was pre­pared in ad­vance and pre­dict­ed that she would ac­cede gave rise to a num­ber of rea­son­able in­fer­ences. The judge had to ad­dress these be­fore he made his find­ings,” Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj’s points on the prepa­ra­tion of the doc­u­ments seemed to in­ter­est Jus­tice Bereaux.

“Why was it nec­es­sary to write that res­ig­na­tion then and there? She could have gone home and cried for two days and then do so. This all in­di­cates some form of pres­sure to me,” Bereaux said, as he not­ed that his con­cerns over the is­sue were mere­ly pre­lim­i­nary and may not af­fect his even­tu­al de­ci­sion on the ap­peal.

Ma­haraj main­tained that dur­ing his con­ver­sa­tion with Ay­ers-Cae­sar, Archie was serv­ing in his role on the JLSC, as he ex­plained the dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion the com­mis­sion would take if she did not ex­er­cise the op­tion to re­sign.

“It is rea­son­able to as­sume that he was speak­ing on be­half of the JLSC,” he said.

Ma­haraj al­so claimed that Har­ris did not prop­er­ly con­sid­er text mes­sages be­tween Ay­ers-Cae­sar, her hus­band and friends, which were sent af­ter the meet­ing with Archie and in which she claimed that she was pres­sured.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, claimed that the res­ig­na­tion let­ter and press re­lease were drafts that were pre­pared by ad­min­is­tra­tive staff and giv­en to Ay­ers-Cae­sar to ap­prove in an ef­fort to save on time.

“There is no ev­i­dence the Chief Jus­tice had any­thing to do with the con­tents of the state­ment,” Mar­tineau said.

Deal­ing with Archie’s meet­ing with Ay­ers-Cae­sar be­fore her res­ig­na­tion, Mar­tineau sug­gest­ed that he was serv­ing both as JLSC chair­man and the ad­min­is­tra­tive head of the Ju­di­cia­ry si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

He sug­gest­ed that be­cause the two of­fice hold­ers had pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sions over how to re­solve the is­sues sur­round­ing Ay­ers-Cae­sar, Archie was ob­lig­at­ed to in­form her of the op­tions based on his ear­li­er dis­cus­sions with the then mem­bers of the JLSC.

“He was hav­ing a dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tion with her. There was noth­ing wrong with that,” Mar­tineau said.

“What hap­pened here is an iso­lat­ed ad­min­is­tra­tive case. The Chief Jus­tice is en­ti­tled and even du­ty-bound to speak with the judge, even in mat­ters of al­leged or po­ten­tial mis­be­hav­iour,” he added.

Mar­tineau called up­on the pan­el to up­hold Archie’s ver­sion of what tran­spired at the meet­ing over Ay­ers-Cae­sar.

“There is no ev­i­dence that she was told that the dis­ci­pli­nary thresh­old had been met. It would be re­mark­able if she was in­flu­enced by some­thing she did not hear,” he said.

In the law­suit, Ay­ers-Cae­sar al­so list­ed for­mer Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona as a de­fen­dant, as she claimed that she in­formed him of Archie’s al­leged con­duct and he ig­nored her.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, at­tor­neys for the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, who rep­re­sent­ed Car­mona, stat­ed that they would not get in­volved in the ap­peal, as it did not take is­sue with Jus­tice Har­ris’ lack of neg­a­tive find­ings against Car­mona.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ron­nie Bisses­sar, while Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, Ian Ben­jamin, SC, Ian Roach and Mar­celle Fer­di­nand ap­peared along­side Mar­tineau for the JLSC.

The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Dou­glas Mendes, SC, Ravi Nan­ga, Ravi Heffes-Doon and Sav­it­ri Ma­haraj.