GOVERNMENT LAWYERS have announced that they are going to the United Kingdom Privy Council to challenge the Jamaican Court of Appeal's recent ruling that the Government blundered by suing the wrong parties in the Junior Doctors' case.
The decision seems both frivolous and time-wasting in view of the point of law they are asking the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to rule on.
The government has been at pains to hammer home to the public that a major reason for dispensing with the Privy Council as Jamaica's final court of appeal is the fact that it was rather expensive to pursue such appeals. The Attorney-General himself has stated that it costs approximately 40,000 pounds ($2.5 million) for an appeal from Jamaica to be heard by the Judicial Committee.
Yet the government is hell-bent on having a Caribbean Court of Justice replace the Judicial Committee.
It is cause for concern that a government which expresses great faith in our justice system would have given the approval for its lawyers to seek the intervention of the United Kingdom Privy Council on such a simple point of law namely, whether the Junior Doctors' Association and its Central Executive are legal entities capable of being sued under the Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act.
All three judges of the Jamaican Court of Appeal unanimously held that the Attorney-General, who was the plaintiff in the case against the Junior Doctors, had brought the ex parte summons in the Supreme Court against the wrong parties because they were unincorporated bodies and could not be sued in a representative capacity.
The court said the members of the executive should have been named in the suit when the Attorney-General took them to court for breaching the Industrial Disputes Tribunal ruling this year to resume normal duties in the face of a back-to-work order.
Is the government in effect saying it has no faith in our local court to adjudicate on such a simple point of law?
The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner.
