At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing for­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar say they have not yet been no­ti­fied if the State has filed an ap­peal fol­low­ing the Oc­to­ber 12 rul­ing of the Court of Ap­peal which found she was co­erced and threat­ened out of of­fice.

How­ev­er, Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj said while there has been no word from the op­pos­ing le­gal team, they are still well with­in the 21-day pe­ri­od for fil­ing, which be­gan on Oc­to­ber 13.

The Court of Ap­peal last week ruled that the for­mer chief mag­is­trate was co­erced and forced out of of­fice by the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) and that her res­ig­na­tion, which was il­le­gal­ly ob­tained, should be ex­punged from the Pres­i­dent’s records.

The JLSC, which has the au­thor­i­ty to ap­point and dis­ci­pline ju­di­cial of­fi­cers, is head­ed by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie.

Jus­tices of Ap­peal Al­lan Men­don­ca, Nolan Bereaux and Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon de­liv­ered sep­a­rate but unan­i­mous de­ci­sions up­hold­ing the ap­peal by Ay­ers-Cae­sar that she had been pres­sured in­to re­sign­ing as a High Court Judge in 2017.

Le­gal coun­sel for the JLSC last Fri­day said it was too soon to say if an ap­peal would be filed.

No up­date has since been pro­vid­ed on whether or not an ap­peal will be filed.

Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) is ex­pect­ed to re­lease a state­ment on the rul­ing short­ly.

The Court of Ap­peal judges found that the de­ci­sion of the JLSC on April 27, 2017, that Ay­ers-Cae­sar be giv­en the op­tion of with­draw­ing from the High Court bench and re­turn­ing to the mag­is­tra­cy to dis­charge her pro­fes­sion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties—and in the event she re­fus­es to with­draw, the Com­mis­sion would con­sid­er in­sti­tut­ing dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, was ul­tra vires, and de­clared null and void.

Ay­ers-Cae­sar was ap­point­ed a judge on April 12, 2017 and re­signed 15 days lat­er amidst pub­lic out­rage re­gard­ing the num­ber of un­fin­ished cas­es she left be­hind in the Mag­is­trates’ Court, which was ini­tial­ly said to be 28—but was lat­er changed to 53.

Ma­haraj is sched­uled to host a me­dia brief­ing in Port-of-Spain this week­end, to pro­vide a de­tailed analy­sis of the judg­ment and an ex­pla­na­tion of the con­se­quences. An­oth­er brief­ing is sched­uled to be held on Oc­to­ber 28 at the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) head­quar­ters in St Au­gus­tine to delve in­to the sedi­tion dis­missal which cur­rent SDMS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Vi­jay Ma­haraj al­so lost last week.