Derek Achong

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ac­tivist Mar­sha Walk­er has ap­pealed a judge's de­ci­sion to dis­miss her in­ter­pre­ta­tion law­suit over whether the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er's ap­proval is re­quired for one-man silent protest ac­tion.

De­liv­er­ing a judge­ment, ear­li­er this month, High Court Judge Joan Charles dis­missed Walk­er's law­suit and or­dered her to pay the State's le­gal costs for de­fend­ing it.

In her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Charles ruled that the case was un­nec­es­sary as the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act was clear that ap­proval was not need­ed.

In her ap­peal, filed short­ly af­ter the out­come of her case, Walk­er's lawyers claimed that Jus­tice Charles erred when she found that there was no live dis­pute be­tween the par­ties to jus­ti­fy the court's in­ter­ven­tion.

They point­ed out that their client was forced to file the law­suit af­ter the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) gave a dif­fer­ent in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the leg­is­la­tion.

"The court fur­ther erred in fail­ing to have re­gard to the fact that pri­or to the fil­ing its sub­mis­sion in re­sponse, the Re­spon­dent and In­ter­est­ed Par­ty did not give any in­di­ca­tion that it did not sup­port the in­ter­pre­ta­tion and mean­ing set out in the claim such that the claim was be­ing con­ced­ed and no longer nec­es­sary," they said.

They al­so con­tend­ed that their client should not have been or­dered to cov­er the State's le­gal costs as the le­gal po­si­tion was on­ly clar­i­fied as a re­sult of her pur­su­ing the case.

Walk­er filed the claim af­ter she al­leged­ly at­tempt­ed to en­gage in in­di­vid­ual protest ac­tion out­side the Red House in Port-of-Spain on three oc­ca­sions be­tween Ju­ly and No­vem­ber 2021 and was stopped by po­lice of­fi­cers due to a lack of ap­proval from the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er's Of­fice.

Af­ter the third time, Walk­er wrote to the com­mis­sion­er's of­fice seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the of­fi­cial pol­i­cy.

The TTPS's Head of Le­gal Ser­vices Anya Ra­mute-Mo­han re­spond­ed and claimed that ap­proval was re­quired for a "one-man peace­ful protest".

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Charles not­ed that the leg­is­la­tion on­ly deals with pub­lic march­es and meet­ings that in­volve more than one per­son.

"There is no doubt that an in­di­vid­ual's abil­i­ty to host/or­gan­ise a pub­lic meet­ing or march is sub­ject to the re­quire­ments of the Act and the pow­ers grant­ed there­in to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice," Jus­tice Charles said.

"How­ev­er, this does not ap­ply au­to­mat­i­cal­ly to "protest" ac­tiv­i­ties, es­pe­cial­ly to one-man silent protests," she added.

Walk­er was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, Jared Ja­groo, Natasha Bis­ram, and Vishaal Siewsaran.

Rishi Dass, Kariss­sa Singh, and Ryan Grant rep­re­sent­ed the com­mis­sion­er's of­fice, while Fyard Ho­sein, SC, Ami­rah Ra­haman, Avaria Niles, and Jek­ilyah Gib­son rep­re­sent­ed the AG's Of­fice.