State must pay woman for 15-year wait on court

OPPRESSIVE is how a High Court judge described the 15 years it took for the Industrial Court to deliver a judgment in a trade dispute between a woman and the company she worked for. Justice Peter Jamadar called on the Registry of the court to explain just why a case filed by Cyrilla de Bourg of Seventh Street, Barataria, was heard in 1975, but judgment delivered 15 years later in 1990. In his judgment, Jamadar noted that such long delays in delivering judgments in such disputes were not only hurting the society, but affecting the country in the eyes of the international community.

In finding that the court’s delay was unconstitutional, Jamadar ordered the State to pay monetary compensation to de Bourg, 53. He said that such delay must not be repeated and also ordered exemplary damages be paid to the woman, including her legal costs. On May 5, 1975, de Bourg was dismissed from her job at Cheeseborough Ponds International Ltd. The company, which is now defunct, manufactured cosmetics. She and other company workers had taken strike action, and the Transport and Industrial Workers’ Trade Union filed proceedings in the court on de Bourg’s behalf.  The dispute was heard by Industrial Court judges, but the court delivered its decision on April 6, 1990, 15 years later. The judges ordered de Bourg be reinstated, but she never was.

De Bourg filed a constitutional motion against the State in 2002, in which she claimed that the delay violated her right to justice. The filing of the motion two years ago would have been 12 years after judgment was handed down in the Industrial Court. It became a classic case of “delay versus delay” at the trial of the motion, when the State, through State counsel Sacha Bridgemohansingh, submitted to Justice Jamadar that de Bourg herself had delayed in filing the action — 12 years after the Industrial Court judgment. However, de Bourg’s attorney Sunil Gosine countered that the woman, who remained unemployed and was never reinstated, could not afford an attorney to advise her on the legal options available to her.

During the woman’s 15-year wait for judgment, she had complained to former Ombudsman Evan Rees and the then Industrial Court president, Braithwaite. De Bourg also picketed the Industrial Court building in Port-of-Spain. In a hard-hitting 23-page judgment delivered in the San Fernando Second Civil Court yesterday, Jamadar stated that he believed de Bourg could not access legal advice. The judge commented that poverty was a real barrier to access justice in Trinidad and Tobago. “In my opinion, poverty, which is the burden of so many in developing countries, is a real barrier to access to justice in countries like Trinidad and Tobago,” he said. There was therefore no real prejudice to the State, he added, by de Bourg’s delay in filing the motion.

Jamadar stated that not only has no explanation been given by the court for the delay in delivering the judgment, but there was also no record of it in the court’s registry. He stated that it was therefore unreasonable to conclude that there was no reasonable explanation for the impugned delay of the court in delivering its judgment. Jamadar also added that to fail to deliver judgment after 15 years without any explanation could only be described as oppressive, arbitrary and unconstitutional. The judge ordered damages for de Bourg be assessed by a Master of the High Court.