The Editor, Sir:
In spite of all the many recent changes at the Supreme Court, including new rules of Civil Procedure 2002, propelled by the urgent need to increase efficiency in the administration of justice, the situation on the ground has hardly changed in the 15 years since I became an attorney-at-law.
The time that it takes to get a case before the courts and to get back a copy of the court's order after trial is still too long, arduous and unpredictable. Whilst this process should be governed by transparent organisation principles, the alternative culture of Anancism operates to frustrate many attorneys, their agents and clients alike. This alternative pattern has become settled largely because attorneys-at-law hardly protest. Their inclination is not to change the status quo but to acquiesce and profit from it.
Civil Procedure Rules
The new Civil Procedure Rules of 2002 attempted to address the major problem of long delays at the Supreme Court by stipulating, inter alia, that a date for hearing should be fixed by the Registry for all fixed date claims "not more than eight weeks" after filing the claim, and for other matters, a Case Management Conference date must be set not more than eight weeks after the filing of the defence in the case. These rules depict the time frame envisaged by lawmakers. Our administrators are the breakers of the said law because nowhere is this time-frame adhered to. The stark fact is that to get a date or anything done at the Supreme Court Registry, one cannot rely on any automatic process. The attorneys or their bearers must follow up on their matters by 'waiting', 'begging' or pushing and sometimes 'misbehaving' in order to get things done by clerks and officials.
There is no clear process at work ensuring that after a certain time period, your date or order can be collected from a specified person or office there. Most serious is the lack of responsible and effective supervision to put things right.
Perhaps the number one complaint against the system is the extent to which Registry officials lose our files for any number of non-judicial reasons.
Nonchalantly they tell us that "the file cannot be found," "the file is not in place," or "the file is lost" or "don't know when the file will turn up."
many lives affected
Imagine! A malfunctioning which is obviously their fault or their creation, and certainly their responsibility, is treated by them more like 'acts of God' about which nothing can be done. A great many cases and countless lives (not just my own) have been affected by this Anancy strategy of somebody "pulling the file", or somebody (malevolently) making sure that the file is not in place, or that it disappears without any internal record of its whereabouts, for any length of period.
An efficient bureaucratic administration must ensure as priority, if it is to be efficient and fair, knowledge of the whereabouts of every file, by devising proper administrative procedures and facilities.
In divorce matters, my own files are so frequently 'lost' or 'cannot be located' that following a sociological truism with its dire implications for us and my practice comes to mind: "If a thing happens once, it is an accident; twice, it is a coincidence; thrice, it is a pattern; four times, it becomes a law."
This Anancy pattern will have to stop because of its social costs to the Jamaican people; persons doing this must be discovered, reprimanded, and stopped by those paid to supervise the system.
I am, etc.,
DENNIS FORSYTHE PhD
(Sociology)
Attorney-at-Law
66 Duke Street
Kingston
