Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Se­nior Coun­sel Kei­th Scot­land has re­quest­ed al­most two weeks to re­spond to al­le­ga­tions that a le­gal team he led on be­half of the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) mis­led a court in a law­suit.

The is­sue of the pur­port­ed mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion was raised as a law­suit brought by med­ical prac­ti­tion­er Dr Fa­yard Mo­hammed against the com­mis­sion came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad yes­ter­day morn­ing.

In the law­suit, un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA), Mo­hammed, through his lawyer Farai Hove-Ma­sai­sai, re­quest­ed the dis­clo­sure of the com­mis­sion’s pol­i­cy re­gard­ing the in­stal­la­tion of high-ten­sion wires over pri­vate prop­er­ty.

In Oc­to­ber last year, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad up­held Mo­hammed’s case as he ruled that the com­mis­sion failed in its le­gal du­ty to re­spond to his re­quest with­in the re­quired time and gave “un­rea­son­able and ir­ra­tional” rea­sons for re­fus­ing dis­clo­sure.

Dur­ing a hear­ing in Jan­u­ary, at­tor­ney Asha Watkins-Montserin, who ap­peared along­side Scot­land, claimed that the com­mis­sion had no writ­ten pol­i­cy and its prac­tices were guid­ed by ex­ist­ing reg­u­la­tions.

How­ev­er, af­ter Scot­land and Montserin were re­placed by a le­gal team from Free­dom Law Cham­bers led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan, the com­mis­sion went on record to state that Watkins-Montserin’s pre­vi­ous po­si­tion was false.

In an af­fi­davit, T&TEC’s le­gal of­fi­cer, Can­dace Price, point­ed to sev­er­al pol­i­cy doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to Mo­hammed’s re­quest that should have been dis­closed.

She claimed that the com­mis­sion nev­er in­formed its for­mer le­gal team that the doc­u­ments did not ex­ist and apol­o­gised for what tran­spired.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad raised se­ri­ous con­cerns over the al­leged mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions as he sought to ques­tion Watkins-Montserin.

“I am quite anx­ious to deal with this mat­ter as ex­pe­di­tious­ly as pos­si­ble, as the du­ty of can­dour re­quires that all rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the court must be ground­ed in fact,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

Scot­land in­ter­vened to ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what tran­spired.

“This is on me,” Scot­land said.

Scot­land re­quest­ed tran­scripts of the hear­ing in which the rep­re­sen­ta­tion was made, which he said would help ex­plain what oc­curred.

He was giv­en un­til No­vem­ber 17 to pro­vide an af­fi­davit with the ex­pla­na­tion.

The case is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing on No­vem­ber 24.

T&TEC is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Vishaal Siewsaran and Can­dice Ramkhal­wan.