Law Association files lawsuit against Trinidad PM

(Trinidad Guardian) The Law As­so­ci­a­tion has filed its law­suit against Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley over his de­ci­sion to re­ject its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against em­bat­tled Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie. 

The as­so­ci­a­tion’s le­gal team filed its ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion in the High Court Reg­istry at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. 

 
Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the case was ran­dom­ly as­signed to Jus­tice Vasheist Kokaram but a date for the hear­ing of the ap­pli­ca­tion for leave to pur­sue the case was not im­me­di­ate­ly set. 

Based on the usu­al time­line for pro­cess­ing such cas­es, it is like­ly to come up for hear­ing, next week. 

It is un­like­ly that the as­so­ci­a­tion would be de­nied leave as the thresh­old for do­ing so is low, with Kokaram hav­ing to de­cide whether it had pre­sent­ed a valid claim with a rea­son­able prospect of suc­cess. 

In the law­suit, the as­so­ci­a­tion is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over Row­ley’s han­dling of the re­port, which rec­om­mend­ed that he ex­er­cise his dis­cre­tion un­der Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion to ad­vise the Pres­i­dent to in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tions by com­menc­ing im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Archie. 

The de­c­la­ra­tions in­clude that Row­ley’s de­ci­sion was il­le­gal, ir­ra­tional, un­rea­son­able and was made in bad faith.  

The as­so­ci­a­tion is al­so claim­ing that Row­ley’s de­ci­sion was not made in the per­for­mance of his con­sti­tu­tion­al func­tions in the pub­lic in­ter­est and that he took in­to ac­count ir­rel­e­vant con­sid­er­a­tions. 

It is seek­ing an or­der quash­ing the de­ci­sion and an­oth­er com­pelling Row­ley to re­con­sid­er it. 

In the le­gal doc­u­ments, the as­so­ci­a­tion’s lawyers sought to give a brief out­line of the his­to­ry of its in­volve­ment with the al­le­ga­tions against Archie as well as de­tails of Row­ley’s de­ci­sion and his sub­se­quent com­ments on the is­sue. 

The as­so­ci­a­tion is chal­leng­ing Row­ley’s move to based his de­ci­sion main­ly on le­gal ad­vice ob­tained from British Queen’s Coun­sel Howard Stevens. The as­so­ci­a­tion claimed that Stevens’ ad­vice was method­olog­i­cal­ly and an­a­lyt­i­cal­ly flawed. 

It al­so al­leged that Row­ley went be­yond his con­sti­tu­tion­al re­mit by fol­low­ing Stevens ad­vice, which sought to analyse whether the as­so­ci­a­tion had un­earthed suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence against Archie in its pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion. 

“The Prime Min­is­ter re­lied on what he per­ceived to be un­cer­tain­ties or in­ad­e­qua­cies in the ev­i­dence, so as to re­ject the ap­pro­pri­ate­ness of mak­ing a ref­er­ence. In so do­ing, how­ev­er, he usurped the fact-find­ing role of the tri­bunal,” the le­gal doc­u­ments said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so crit­i­cised Row­ley for fail­ing to con­duct his own ba­sic fact-find­ing ex­er­cise as al­leged­ly re­quired un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“In­stead, the Prime Min­is­ter wrong­ly ap­proached his role as be­ing one of re­view­ing the com­mit­tee’s re­port to de­ter­mine whether the com­mit­tee es­tab­lished a pri­ma fa­cie case for a ref­er­ence un­der sec­tion 137 and took on no re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of his own to make even a min­i­mum of en­quiries,” the le­gal doc­u­ments said. 

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so took um­brage to Row­ley’s re­cent state­ments that the law­suit was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed and fu­elled by a group of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sup­port­ers with­in the as­so­ci­a­tion. 

It not­ed that Row­ley’s bias claims were in di­rect con­tra­dic­tion to an as­sess­ment of the al­le­ga­tions which was con­duct­ed by the Court of Ap­peal and the Privy Coun­cil when they dis­missed Archie’s le­gal chal­lenge over the as­so­ci­a­tion’s probe. 

“Giv­en his sub­jec­tive views on the na­ture and pur­pose of the Ap­pli­cant’s Com­mit­tee re­port as set out above, the Prime Min­is­ter was not ca­pa­ble of prop­er­ly and fair­ly de­ter­min­ing the ques­tion be­fore him in the ex­er­cise of a con­sti­tu­tion­al func­tion in the pub­lic in­ter­est. 

“Rather, he was more con­cerned to shut down what he con­sid­ered to be the im­prop­er ac­tion of the Ap­pli­cant act­ing at the al­leged be­hest of the UNC and there­by act­ed for an im­prop­er pur­pose or mo­tive and/or his de­ci­sion is vi­ti­at­ed by ap­par­ent bias,” the le­gal doc­u­ments said. 

In crit­i­cis­ing the law­suit, Row­ley al­so claimed that it may cost the State mil­lions of dol­lars in le­gal fees to de­fend the claim. If the as­so­ci­a­tion is even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful in its le­gal chal­lenge, it will al­so seek to force to State to foot its le­gal bill. 

The as­so­ci­a­tion is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Dr Lloyd Bar­nett, Elaine Green, Rishi Dass, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Kirk Ben­gochea, and Im­ran Ali.