Last Updated on February 10, 2020, 5:48 AM AST by Anthony Morris
The Chief Justice of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, Her Ladyship, the Hon Dame Janice Pereira has said that the clearance rate of the High Court cases in the jurisdiction of St Kitts and Nevis fell below 50 % in 2018.
Dame Janice was at the time delivering an address to mark the start of the New Law Term. During her presentation, Janice noted the Court was entering a new year, a new decade and a new era for the ECSC and it was important to keep the ship on course – on the road towards the Court excellence.
Giving a snapshot of the volume of work that the Court deals with on a yearly basis, she disclosed that at the Court of Appeal, there were 513 appeals filed in 2018, which is a 14.22% increase over 2017.
She reported that in 2018, a total of 1,228 appeal matters were heard via full court sittings, video or teleconferences and chamber hearings. The Court of Appeal delivered 56 written judgments and 686 oral decisions, making the total of 742 decisions delivered by the Court of Appeal in the year 2018. Oral decisions accounted for 92% of total decisions by the Court.
This, she added is undeniably a huge effort as the complement of judges on the Court of Appeal currently stands at only 6.
The Chief Justice said that out of necessity, they often engage acting judges just to enable sufficiency of panels to hear appeals, particularly in jurisdictions such as the Territory of the Antigua and Barbuda, Virgin Islands and Saint Lucia.
At the High Court level throughout the Court’s jurisdiction, Pereira said that a total of 6,791 cases were filed in 2018 and 4,133 matters were disposed of, marking a clearance rate of 60.86%, with a dip of 7% from 2017.
“Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda and Grenada remain the busiest jurisdictions in terms of cases filed with each having more than 1,000 cases filed. In Saint Lucia there were more than 1,500 cases. The clearance rates of the various High Courts were mostly less than 100% in 2018 indicating an accumulation of case backlog,” she said.
“In 2018, only Antigua and Barbuda was able to achieve a clearance rate more than 100%, indicating a reduction in the case backlog,” the Chief Justice reported.
She said that in that same year, the clearance rates in some of the High Courts were less than 50%, which include Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis and Commonwealth of Dominica.
Anthony Morris covers stories related to politics and regional developments. His in-depth reporting about governance and reforms makes him stand out in regional journalism, with a deep analysis of political trends and their impact on Caribbean communities.
