The Privy Council has made a landmark ruling against Prime Minister Patrick Manning and 17 members of the Trinidad and Tobago cabinet and has ordered them to pay compensation to opposition MP Chandresh Sharma.The matter is in relation to an action brought by Sharma in 2005 in which he contended that the Cabinet was not complying with the Freedom of Information Act 1999, and was disregarding the law by not publishing details of State bodies as required under the Act.
Sharma was represented by Sir Fenton Ramsahoye and Anand Ramlogan, the same team that has successfully argued several discrimination cases involving Manning.
The local courts began judicial review proceedings on March 1, 2005 on Sharma's legal argument that 167 public authorities had failed to make public statements as required under the act.
The Fyzabad MP also alleged that 37 of them had failed to update their statements, and that the relevant minister had failed to give reasons why the authorities were not complying with the law.
On October 25, 2005, Justice Judith Jones dismissed Sharma's application for leave. Sharma subsequently went to the Court of Appeal, which ruled on Sept. 27, 2006 that the MP could file for judicial review.
In its ruling in favour of Sharma the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council harshly criticized the Trinidad and Tobago cabinet for continuing to flout the country's law.
And it also slammed the Court of Appeal for taking nearly three years to write its judgment in the case, which it said was a simple application for leave to file for judicial review.
Lord Scott, one of the British Law Lords who wrote the judgment, noted that the court of Appeal waited until May 15, 2009 to make its reasons known.
Scott wrote, “It is now over eight years since part II of the 1999 Act came into effect, and, if the circumstances deposed to by Mr Sharma are unchanged, there has been a continuing flouting by the executive of the will of the legislature so far as the implementation of part II of the Act is concerned."
He agreed with the Court of Appeal that the length of time between the law taking effect and the date of the application raised the inference that the statements "must have been capable of being published well before the application for leave, and that the obligation of the Minister under section 7 (4) must have arisen.”
Scott said the Law Lords also agreed that, “A prima facie case of neglect under section 7 (4) arises on the evidence requiring an answer from the government.”
The judgment commented why Sharma took so long to bring this case to court, saying Justice Jones did not pay "sufficient attention to the fact that what was alleged is a continuing breach of a continuing duty."
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