Scores of Court of Appeal cases were found lying idle when Chief Justice Sir Patterson Cheltenham assumed office.
The revelation was prompted when Sir Patterson, joined by Justices Francis Belle and Margaret Reifer for a case management conference on a civil lawsuit, chided the lawyers for the appellant who filed an appeal and “nothing else” and were also a no-show. They also reportedly failed to notify counsel for the respondents.
The development did not sit well with the Chief Justice who revealed that the appellate court had been sifting through the numerous idle cases.
“On assuming office, I instructed that there be a serious dig of the Court of Appeal and that dig out found 70 matters lying idle,” he disclosed adding, “This is classic. A notice of appeal and nothing else.”
“We have been ferreting them out so that matters can be brought on for hearing. So that the word will go out that ‘we have filed an appeal and that inefficient Court is doing nothing’. That is not the story. It’s the lawyers that are doing nothing,” said Sir Patterson who described the situation as a “dangerous deficiency”.
He added: “Because it then allows lawyers to file and do nothing, truthfully if you are serious about an appeal you file it, you activate it.
“The rules committee is being activated at any time now and that is certainly one of the amendments we will have to make.”
Several lawyers for a number of respondents in today’s case told the court that they had been taken by surprise in the case management conference as the lawyers for the appellants had given no notice of the appeal.
Justice Belle in addressing the matter suggested that timelines may have to be imposed when filing such cases and “if they fail to adhere to the timeline there will be consequences”.
The Court of Appeal judge made clear that lawyers, as officers of the court, have an obligation to see their cases processed under the basic overriding objectives and “not waste the courts time and other counsels’ time”.
He made reference to public concerns about the backlog in the island’s law courts. “We want to avoid unnecessary backlog therefore they [counsel] need to make haste and decide what they are doing or somebody would do it for them,”
Those concerns have been amplified by repeat criticism of judicial sloth in the Barbadian courts by the Caribbean Court of Justice as decades-old cases make their way up the appeals chain to the CCJ, the final court of appeal.
Justice Reifer raised concern that the lawyers who filed the notice of appeal on behalf of the appellant had not made an appearance. She declared that someone should have been in court especially as “it is their appeal”
Sir Patterson also made clear that such disregard by any counsel would “not be tolerated by the court”. He said even though a letter had been sent to the registry from the chambers of the appellant’s lawyers, “they should be in court to give reasons why the appellant would want an adjournment because it is their appeal”.
