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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

?Now on three months' sick leave...

Mc Nicolls battles cancer

by

20100128

Chief Mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc Nicolls has been di­ag­nosed with can­cer. Mc Nicolls has been seek­ing med­ical at­ten­tion in Cana­da, ju­di­cial sources dis­closed yes­ter­day. The ill­ness, known as chron­ic lym­phoid leukaemia (CLL), is the most com­mon type of leukaemia. Leukemias are ab­nor­mal and ma­lig­nant neo­plas­tic pro­lif­er­a­tions (can­cers) of the white blood cells. Sources said Mc Nicolls test­ed pos­i­tive for CLL last year. Be­fore pro­ceed­ing on three months' sick leave late last year, Mc Nicolls sub­mit­ted a med­ical cer­tifi­cate to the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC), in­di­cat­ing the di­ag­no­sis. He had been on two weeks' va­ca­tion just be­fore pro­ceed­ing on the three-month ab­sence. Deputy Chief Mag­is­trate Mark Welling­ton was ap­point­ed by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie to act in Mc Nicolls' ab­sence and Se­nior Mag­is­trate In­dra Ramoo-Haynes is act­ing as Deputy Chief Mag­is­trate. On sev­er­al days in De­cem­ber, Mc Nicolls con­duct­ed marathon ses­sions at the Port-of-Spain Eighth Mag­is­trate's Court through­out the day to com­plete a num­ber of mur­der in­quiries.

"What could not be com­plet­ed be­fore the com­mence­ment of his two-week va­ca­tion was abort­ed and trans­ferred be­fore oth­er courts," a mag­is­trate said. Mc Nicolls' leave is ex­pect­ed to ex­pire on March, 20, and he is due to re­sume du­ty on March 22, sources said. Ju­di­cial sources spec­u­late that Mc­Ni­colls is "hard­ly like­ly" to re­sume du­ties. One source said: "I think be­cause of his ill­ness and the fact that he faces a dis­ci­pli­nary tri­bunal, he may not come back at all...He is go­ing to take all his leave that he has in­side, which would take him in­to his re­tire­ment." Mc Nicolls has an en­ti­tle­ment of ap­prox­i­mate­ly one year's va­ca­tion and turns 55 in De­cem­ber, sources said. He has served ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 years in the Pub­lic Ser­vice. The Privy Coun­cil is ex­pect­ed to hand down a de­ci­sion soon on whether Mc Nicolls should face a dis­ci­pli­nary tri­bunal for his re­fusal to tes­ti­fy in a crim­i­nal mat­ter against for­mer Chief Jus­tice Sat­nar­ine Shar­ma. The JLSC brought six charges against the Chief Mag­is­trate af­ter his re­fusal to tes­ti­fy, caus­ing the Shar­ma case to col­lapse.

The T&T Guardian al­so un­der­stands that Mc Nicolls, who lives at St Julien Vil­lage, Princes Town, has been dis­pos­ing of his prop­er­ties in South Trinidad. His body­guard PC Sean Si­mon has been re­as­signed to the Crime and Sup­pres­sion Unit at Mara­bel­la Po­lice Sta­tion. Si­mon was among sev­er­al heav­i­ly-armed po­lice­men who es­cort­ed 12 ac­cused charged with the mur­der of a Co­corite res­i­dent to the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Courts on Wednes­day.

?What is chron­ic lym­pho­cyt­ic leukaemia

?Chron­ic lym­pho­cyt­ic leukaemia (B-CLL) in­volves a par­tic­u­lar sub­type of white blood cells, which is a lym­pho­cyte called a B cell.B cells orig­i­nate in the bone mar­row, de­vel­op in the lymph nodes, and nor­mal­ly fight in­fec­tion. In CLL, the DNA of a B cell is dam­aged, so that it can't fight in­fec­tion by pro­duc­ing an­ti­bod­ies. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, they grow out of con­trol and ac­cu­mu­late in the bone mar­row and blood, where they crowd out healthy blood cells. While gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered in­cur­able, CLL pro­gress­es slow­ly in most cas­es. Many peo­ple with CLL lead nor­mal and ac­tive lives for many years – in some cas­es for decades. The dis­ease most of­ten af­fects adults over the age of 55. In the Unit­ed States dur­ing 2009, about 16,000 new cas­es were di­ag­nosed and an es­ti­mat­ed 4,800 peo­ple died from CLL in 2004.


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