Derek Achong

High Court Judge Vasheist Kokaram has moved ahead in de­ter­min­ing the Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s law­suit, over the de­ci­sion of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to refuse to im­peach em­bat­tled Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie. 

Dur­ing a short hear­ing of the case at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, Kokaram heard sub­mis­sions and de­ter­mined an ap­pli­ca­tion from Row­ley’s le­gal team to strike out as­pects of the as­so­ci­a­tion’s ev­i­dence in the case. 

Kokaram’s de­ci­sion on the ev­i­den­tial ob­jec­tions now clears the way for the par­ties to com­plete the oth­er pre­lim­i­nary is­sues in the case for it to go on tri­al in late Jan­u­ary.  Dur­ing a pre­vi­ous hear­ing, Kokaram stat­ed that he would de­liv­er judge­ment in the case on Feb­ru­ary 19, pro­vid­ed that the par­ties stick to their ini­tial time-lines. 

In mak­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion, Row­ley’s lawyer Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, said that the as­so­ci­a­tion’s af­fi­davits, filed in sup­port of the law­suit, con­tained state­ments that were in­ad­mis­si­ble. 

Re­spond­ing to Ar­mour, the as­so­ci­a­tion’s lawyer Rishi Dass claimed that the state­ments should be left in the law­suit as Row­ley should be re­quired to re­spond to them when he files his wit­ness state­ment in re­sponse. 

Af­ter hear­ing the sub­mis­sions, Kokaram agreed to leave the state­ments re­lat­ed to the ac­tions tak­en by the as­so­ci­a­tion’s ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil pri­or to the ini­ti­a­tion of the law­suit. How­ev­er, he chose to ex­clude state­ments from an in­ter­view, in which for­mer Chief Jus­tice Michael de la Bastide claimed that he nev­er rec­om­mend­ed per­sons for State hous­ing dur­ing his tenure. 

Kokaram al­so struck out in­for­ma­tion on a pend­ing ap­peal, filed by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) over the dis­missal of its elec­tion pe­ti­tions from the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions, which is large­ly based on the po­lit­i­cal al­le­ga­tions against Archie. 

He not­ed that the state­ments had the po­ten­tial to “fer­ret” re­spons­es from Row­ley on in­for­ma­tion that may not rel­e­vant to the case. Be­fore rul­ing on the ob­jec­tions, Kokaram held a pri­vate meet­ing with the at­tor­neys in the case to dis­cuss as­pects of the law­suit which are not in con­tention. 

Dur­ing the brief meet­ing, the par­ties al­so agreed to seal an af­fi­davit from the as­so­ci­a­tion’s vice pres­i­dent Pa­tri­cia Dindyal, which con­tained at­tach­ments that are al­leged­ly “scan­dalous” in na­ture. 

Se­nior Coun­sel John Je­re­mie and Ian Ben­jamin, who are lead­ing Archie’s le­gal team, were present for the hear­ing but did not make sub­mis­sions on the ev­i­den­tial ob­jec­tions. 

In­stead, they stat­ed that they were anx­ious to pro­ceed with the case and have it de­ter­mined. 

“It is our hope that the lev­el of co-op­er­a­tion will con­tin­ue so that the case could be re­solved as ex­pe­di­tious­ly as pos­si­ble,” Je­re­mie said.  In the law­suit, the as­so­ci­a­tion is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over Row­ley’s han­dling of its in­ves­tiga­tive re­port in­to the mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions, which rec­om­mend­ed that Row­ley ex­er­cise his dis­cre­tion to ad­vise the Pres­i­dent to in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tions by com­menc­ing im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Archie. 

The de­c­la­ra­tions in­clude that Row­ley’s de­ci­sion was il­le­gal, ir­ra­tional, un­rea­son­able and was made in bad faith.  

The as­so­ci­a­tion is al­so claim­ing that Row­ley’s de­ci­sion was not made in the per­for­mance of his con­sti­tu­tion­al func­tions in the pub­lic in­ter­est and that he took in­to ac­count ir­rel­e­vant con­sid­er­a­tions. 

It is al­so seek­ing an or­der quash­ing the de­ci­sion and an­oth­er com­pelling Row­ley to re­con­sid­er it. 

The as­so­ci­a­tion is chal­leng­ing Row­ley’s move to base his de­ci­sion main­ly on le­gal ad­vice ob­tained from British Queen’s Coun­sel Howard Stevens, which the as­so­ci­a­tion claimed was method­olog­i­cal­ly and an­a­lyt­i­cal­ly flawed. 

It al­so al­leges that Row­ley went be­yond his con­sti­tu­tion­al re­mit by fol­low­ing Stevens ad­vice, which sought to analyse whether the as­so­ci­a­tion had un­earthed suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence against Archie in its pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion. 

The as­so­ci­a­tion is al­so crit­i­cis­ing  Row­ley for fail­ing to con­duct his own ba­sic fact-find­ing ex­er­cise as al­leged­ly re­quired un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.

The as­so­ci­a­tion has al­so tak­en um­brage to Row­ley’s re­cent state­ments that the law­suit was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed and fu­elled by a group of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sup­port­ers with­in the as­so­ci­a­tion. 

It al­leges that Row­ley’s bias claims were in di­rect con­tra­dic­tion to an as­sess­ment of the al­le­ga­tions which was con­duct­ed by the Court of Ap­peal and the Privy Coun­cil when they dis­missed Archie’s le­gal chal­lenge over the as­so­ci­a­tion’s probe. 

The as­so­ci­a­tion is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Dr Lloyd Bar­nett, Elaine Green, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Kirk Ben­gochea, and Im­ran Ali. Row­ley is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Justin Phelps, Raphael Ajod­hia and Kendra Mark. Archie is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ker­wyn Gar­cia and Kei­th Scot­land.  Fyard Ho­sein, SC, Sasha Bridge­mo­hans­ingh and Michelle Ben­jamin are rep­re­sent­ing the AG’s Of­fice.