Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The Ju­di­cia­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go has apol­o­gised to court users who have ex­pe­ri­enced long de­lays in re­ceiv­ing judg­ments and de­ci­sions, ac­knowl­edg­ing the im­pact of those de­lays and com­mit­ting to de­liv­er­ing out­stand­ing mat­ters in the short­est pos­si­ble time.

“We ac­knowl­edge that some court users have had to wait a long time for judg­ments and de­ci­sions to be giv­en. For this, the Ju­di­cia­ry sin­cere­ly apol­o­gis­es,” the Of­fice of the Chief Jus­tice said yes­ter­day in a me­dia state­ment.

The apol­o­gy came as the Ju­di­cia­ry dis­closed in­for­ma­tion on out­stand­ing de­ci­sions and judg­ments by ju­di­cial of­fi­cers of the High Court and the Court of Ap­peal, fol­low­ing a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest sub­mit­ted by An­tho­ny Dop­son on No­vem­ber 25. The dis­clo­sure was made si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly to the me­dia, which the Ju­di­cia­ry said formed part of its com­mit­ment to ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and the time­ly de­liv­ery of jus­tice.

The in­for­ma­tion cov­ers judges of the Court of Ap­peal and the High Court, as well as mas­ters and reg­is­trars, and re­flects the po­si­tion as at No­vem­ber 25. It in­cludes re­served judg­ments out­stand­ing for more than six months, out­stand­ing de­ci­sions on costs, state­ments of costs filed but not yet as­sessed, out­stand­ing rea­sons for ap­peal ex­ceed­ing six months, and ap­peals filed over the past five years in which High Court de­ci­sions were over­turned by the Court of Ap­peal.

To com­ply with the re­quest, ju­di­cial of­fi­cers re­viewed their as­signed cas­es and dock­ets to iden­ti­fy out­stand­ing de­ci­sions, judg­ments and rea­sons for judg­ment. Reg­is­trars al­so ex­am­ined sev­er­al hun­dred Court of Ap­peal or­ders made since 2020, as sta­tis­tics had not pre­vi­ous­ly been main­tained to iden­ti­fy ju­di­cial of­fi­cers whose de­ci­sions were re­versed by the ap­pel­late court.

The Ju­di­cia­ry said the in­for­ma­tion re­lied large­ly on self-re­port­ing by ju­di­cial of­fi­cers and ac­knowl­edged the need to im­prove record-keep­ing and strength­en sys­tems to track pend­ing de­ci­sions as new mon­i­tor­ing mech­a­nisms are im­ple­ment­ed.

In dis­clos­ing the in­for­ma­tion, the Ju­di­cia­ry not­ed that there are no fixed time­lines in law in Trinidad and To­ba­go for the de­liv­ery of judg­ments. While the re­quest fo­cused on mat­ters out­stand­ing for more than six months, the Ju­di­cia­ry said that pe­ri­od is not a le­gal stan­dard in this ju­ris­dic­tion, al­though it may be suit­able for most cas­es.

It added that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of de­ci­sions are de­liv­ered with­in six months, in­clud­ing many oral judg­ments giv­en on ap­pli­ca­tions, af­ter tri­als in the High Court and fol­low­ing hear­ings be­fore the Court of Ap­peal. The Ju­di­cia­ry al­so not­ed that judg­ments of the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil are some­times de­liv­ered more than six months af­ter oral hear­ings.

The Of­fice of the Chief Jus­tice cit­ed the State­ments of Prin­ci­ples and Guide­lines for Ju­di­cial Con­duct, which state: “A judge shall dis­pose prompt­ly of the busi­ness of the court and in par­tic­u­lar ren­der judg­ments and rea­sons in writ­ing ef­fi­cient­ly, fair­ly and with rea­son­able prompt­ness.” The ac­com­pa­ny­ing com­men­tary notes that while judg­ment writ­ing can be dif­fi­cult and time-con­sum­ing, de­ci­sions and rea­sons should be pro­duced as soon as rea­son­ably pos­si­ble, hav­ing re­gard to ur­gency and spe­cial cir­cum­stances.

The Ju­di­cia­ry ac­knowl­edged that de­liv­er­ing judg­ments with rea­son­able prompt­ness is a core ju­di­cial func­tion, while not­ing that fac­tors such as ill­ness, case com­plex­i­ty and heavy work­loads can af­fect ef­fi­cien­cy.

Mea­sures al­ready un­der way or planned in­clude con­tin­ued train­ing in oral and writ­ten judg­ments, on­go­ing per­for­mance mon­i­tor­ing by ju­di­cial of­fi­cers and the Of­fice of the Chief Jus­tice, men­tor­ing of new­er ju­di­cial of­fi­cers, strength­ened da­ta-col­lec­tion sys­tems, pub­li­ca­tion of per­for­mance-re­lat­ed in­for­ma­tion, en­cour­age­ment of time­ly sub­mis­sions by at­tor­neys-at-law, and reg­u­lar re­port­ing to the me­dia and pub­lic on judg­ments and de­ci­sions de­liv­ered.

The Ju­di­cia­ry al­so named ju­di­cial of­fi­cers who re­port­ed no out­stand­ing de­ci­sions or judg­ments, no out­stand­ing de­ci­sions on costs and no out­stand­ing rea­sons pend­ing ap­peal for mat­ters re­served for more than six months pri­or to No­vem­ber 25. Among High Court judges, Jus­tices Car­ol Gob­in, Frank Seep­er­sad and Mar­garet Mo­hammed re­port­ed no out­stand­ing mat­ters. Mas­ters re­port­ing no out­stand­ing de­ci­sions or judg­ments were Sher­lanne Pierre, Coreen Find­ley, Rish­ma Ram­rat­tan, Wren­er­son Lochan and An­toinette Al­leyn.

“We com­mit to do­ing all that is hu­man­ly pos­si­ble to en­sure that these out­stand­ing judg­ments will be de­liv­ered in the short­est pos­si­ble time,” the Ju­di­cia­ry said, adding that the dis­clo­sure should be seen as part of its du­ty to re­main ac­count­able to the pub­lic and to strength­en trust and con­fi­dence in the ju­di­cial sys­tem.