Trinidad CJ transfers critic to Tobago

(Trinidad Guardian) A high court judge who has been a fierce crit­ic of Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie is chal­leng­ing his de­ci­sion to trans­fer her to head the Ju­di­cia­ry’s new Fam­i­ly Court in To­ba­go.

In a five-page let­ter sent to Archie on Fri­day, which was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in ques­tioned the de­ci­sion, which was on­ly sent to her on Mon­day.

Gob­in, who has been open­ly crit­i­cal of Archie since mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions arose two years ago, raised sev­er­al is­sues with the de­ci­sion in­clud­ing the per­cep­tion that it was based on their tem­pes­tu­ous re­la­tion­ship.

Archie’s de­ci­sion to trans­fer Gob­in came days af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that he would not fol­low the Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s ad­vice to in­sti­tute im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings to in­ves­ti­gate the claims against Archie.

Row­ley ob­tained a le­gal opin­ion on the as­so­ci­a­tion’s re­port and cor­re­spond­ing le­gal ad­vice on the is­sue which stat­ed that there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to war­rant a con­sti­tu­tion­al probe as sug­gest­ed.

The as­so­ci­a­tion has sug­gest­ed that the opin­ion, pre­pared by British Queen’s Coun­sel Howard Stevens, was flawed and is cur­rent­ly seek­ing ad­di­tion­al le­gal ad­vice on whether to bring a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit to chal­lenge Row­ley’s de­ci­sion.

“I must specif­i­cal­ly note as well that this uni­lat­er­al and ar­bi­trary as­sign­ment, tak­ing place in the con­text of our well doc­u­ment­ed past dif­fer­ences must ap­pear, to any dis­pas­sion­ate and rea­son­ably in­formed by­stander, to be tan­ta­mount to the im­po­si­tion of a sanc­tion,” Gob­in said, as she called on Archie to re­con­sid­er his de­ci­sion and hold con­sul­ta­tions with oth­er ju­di­cial of­fi­cers on the “far-reach­ing changes” be­ing con­tem­plat­ed.

In her strong­ly-word­ed let­ter, Gob­in chal­lenged Archie’s claims that the de­ci­sion was based on her ex­per­tise in Fam­i­ly Law.

She claimed that since join­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry in 2004, her on­ly in­volve­ment in the Fam­i­ly Court was when she vol­un­teered to as­sist a col­league for a week, dur­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry’s an­nu­al va­ca­tion in 2005.

Gob­in al­so sug­gest­ed that a judge who has served in the Fam­i­ly Court in Port-of-Spain should have re­ceived the as­sign­ment based on their ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­per­tise.

Gob­in al­so sought to lay out her le­gal un­der­stand­ing of the need to con­sult with staff be­fore re­lo­ca­tion.

She said the re­lo­ca­tion would af­fect her abil­i­ty to sup­port her hus­band, who re­quires med­ical treat­ment and af­ter-care at their home.

“This would be im­pos­si­ble if I was re­lo­cat­ed and my fam­i­ly phys­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed,” she said.

While she not­ed that judges serve in To­ba­go from time to time, there is a his­tor­i­cal prac­tice un­der which they are not as­signed there for a pro­tract­ed pe­ri­od so they can man­age their case-load at the Ju­di­cia­ry’s op­er­a­tions in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do.

In her let­ter, Gob­in in­formed Archie that she would be for­ward­ing the as­sign­ment let­ter and her re­sponse to her col­leagues so that the is­sue could be dis­cussed at a staff meet­ing card­ed for Mon­day.

Since the mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions were lev­elled against Archie in Oc­to­ber 2017, Gob­in has re­peat­ed­ly ad­vo­cat­ed for Archie to meet with her and her col­leagues to clear the air on the is­sues. How­ev­er, he has re­peat­ed­ly de­clined the re­quests which are usu­al­ly made in email threads sent to all judges.