It was refreshing to listen to an address (edited) on VOB news delivered by President of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago (LATT) Martin Daly at the annual Barbados Bar Association dinner. The gist of his address was to tell lawyers and other actors in the local judicature present that they have to think outside the box if the current backlog of cases is to be solved. He opined that to continue to routinely process the thousands of case files currently backlogged in court systems across the Caribbean is a never ending effort. He recommended that an innovative solution will have to be found to remove the backlog of cases so that magistrates especially can be unburdened and start with a clean slate. Of course his elucidation of the problem gives support to BU’s position that the former CJ’s mouthings which promised to make the Magistrates Court more efficient was an exercise in PR. The fact that President Daly to the horror of those present mentioned BU as one source where he obviously gathered information would have caused many to squirm.
Many of our legal beavers appear to be clueless about what it will take to improve file processing in our court system. BU read with interest an Advocate report which quotes Ralph Thorne QC at the opening of the Barbados Community College Industry Services Unit’s two-day seminar on Effective Debt Collection and Fraud Awareness. In the report Thorne responded to a reporter’s question by essaying the following, “There’s a new set of rules now in the High Court, which has given a lot of speed to the court process – the CPR we call them. In the Magistrates’ Court, it was always fairly quick, but there is a backlog…and you just have to be patient”. Contrast Thorne’s plea to Barbadians to be patient with Daly’s heaping of scorn on the existing system of file processing in our court system. Who should we believe? The evidence is there that the local legal fraternity has been mamaguying Bajans for too long.
Here is what we have been able to unearth for the benefit of Ralph Thorne QC et al. The rules referred to by Thorne otherwise called CPR were introduced by former CJ David Simmons and are the UK 1999 Lord Woolfe Reforms. A Google search lists several hits which question the success of CPR. CPR depends heavily on Advance Dispute Resolution (ADR) which many argue is another opportunity to put more money into lawyers’ pockets. The question will always remain – should citizens be denied what is their inalienable right to be heard in Court?
The more we survey the mess that is our court system the more we like the appointment of CJ Designate Marston Gibson from outside the inner ring. Perhaps a quote from distinguished Jamaican judge Patrick Robinson when he says that Jamaica’s “failure to replace the United Kingdom Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) has only served to nourish the seed of unfitness, incapacity and inferiority planted in our heads by 300 years of colonisation” points to the root of the problem. Robinson was quoted further when he reminded “his audience that the English court was established in 1833 to hear appeals from the ‘plantations and colonies’. However, he argued that judicial independence, a natural companion of political independence, could and should have been ours[Jamaica] in 1962.” In light of the debate regarding CJ Designate, Daly’s lament of the court process in the region and Thorne’s vacuous mouthings last week at BCC, here is another refreshing intervention by Jamaican judge Robinson. Isn’t this the point Ras has been making in his submissions?
It is time our lawyers who have been educated on the backs of Barbadian taxpayers give some quality service back to the country and arrest their money grabbing laissez-faire approach to their profession.
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