The present land­scape is a field day for at­tor­neys of every kind in­volved in civ­il, crim­i­nal and tech­ni­cal le­gal con­sti­tu­tion­al mat­ters piled be­fore the courts. Among the out­stand­ing ones are those which have been de­cid­ed at the first lev­el of the court sys­tem and are head­ed for the Court of Ap­peal and a few be­ing lined up to go north­wards to the coun­try’s fi­nal court of ap­peal, the British Privy Coun­cil.

Why the lat­ter is so af­ter 63 years of po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence and af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of a Caribbean Court of Jus­tice is an is­sue for an­oth­er oc­ca­sion.

There are sev­er­al mat­ters in­volved, the ne­ces­si­ty of which can and have been ques­tioned, as they en­tail the ex­pen­di­ture of tens of mil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars, and for­eign ex­change, when they are tak­en to the Privy Coun­cil.

It is cer­tain­ly a right of the State and any­one else to seek first and fi­nal opin­ions of the high­er courts, but is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of lit­i­ga­tion be­ing suc­cess­ful con­sid­ered be­fore such mat­ters are tak­en to the first rung of the court, far more to the Ap­peal Court and the fi­nal court in Britain?

In the case brought against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for the fir­ing of then-gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank, Jwala Ram­bar­ran, the Ap­peal Court de­cid­ed on a quite ba­sic is­sue, which is that Ram­bar­ran was not al­lowed to re­spond to al­le­ga­tions made against him be­fore be­ing fired from the job. Should such a ba­sic er­ror have been made in the first place to ne­ces­si­tate lit­i­ga­tion?

Of a sim­i­lar na­ture is the un­seem­ly and per­haps un­nec­es­sary wran­gle be­tween the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and the Min­istry of Fi­nance over what may have been an un­planned, in­no­cent ad­min­is­tra­tive fail­ure re­lat­ing to get­ting the min­istry’s ac­counts to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al on time.

One read­ing of the de­tails of the is­sues re­port­ed on in­di­cates the com­plete­ly un­nec­es­sary parad­ing of the ar­gu­ments in­volved right up to the Privy Coun­cil, mat­ters which did not have to reach there, a point made by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

In the ar­rest and ques­tion­ing of Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan, SC, has asked ques­tions about the “wicked and scan­dalous ar­rest of the CoP in the sit­u­a­tion she found her­self in.” Mr Khan is not sure that the is­sue should have reached the lev­el of a “crim­i­nal of­fence of mis­be­hav­iour in of­fice or a gen­uine mis­take or mis­un­der­stand­ing.”

There are a num­ber of oth­er such mat­ters in the courts which could have been avoid­ed and solved with­out long drawn out, ag­gra­vat­ed and ex­pen­sive lit­i­ga­tion in an al­ready over­loaded ju­di­cial sys­tem. We are not ad­vo­cat­ing that the courts should not be utilised to set­tle dis­putes, but there are clear­ly cas­es which are tak­en for judg­ment that could have been set­tled via me­di­a­tion with­out the need for lit­i­ga­tion. There are oth­ers which were care­less­ly ad­vanced for court de­ter­mi­na­tion with­out suf­fi­cient mer­it. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there are al­so court cas­es which are in­fused with pol­i­tics but have still been pur­sued as a means of hop­ing to gain a mea­sure of po­lit­i­cal-elec­toral ad­van­tage by one par­ty over the oth­er.

We seem to be in­tent on work­ing against our own best in­ter­ests.