SOME LAWYERS are of the view that the Attorney-General should more often act his role as parens patrie (parent of his country) in making expeditious settlements in civil suits which citizens have brought against the State and in many of which it was obvious that agents of the State, particularly the police, had wronged citizens. Because of this lack of protection to citizens in need or who are under a legal disability, citizens sometimes have to wait for years to have such cases heard by the courts.

The lawyers said that even when lawyers from the Attorney-General's Department accepted liability, the meagre sums awarded as settlement were usually so outrageous that the citizens have to take the issue to the Supreme Court for assessment of damages.

They say the Civil Procedure Rules of 2002, which came into effect in January 2003, have contributed to some extent to the backlog of civil cases.

They explain that all cases which were filed in the Supreme Court before the new rules came into being have to go through all the stages just like the new cases. But some lawyers argue that the older cases, such as those from the 1990s, should be given early trial dates.

The new rules make provisions for all civil cases to go to case-management conference and then to pre-trial reviews which are presided over by judges.

Backlogs and delays go hand-in-hand and litigants in both the civil and criminal courts have complained about the long delays in having their cases heard.

It took Dalton Reynolds, a man convicted of murder, almost 10 years for his appeal to get to the Court of Appea he had filed it just two weeks after conviction. On January 27 this year, the Court of Appeal, in criticising the system of recording and storing records of trials at the Supreme Court, said: "The authorities must bear the blame for the delay and need to avoid any such aberration on its appellate procedural machinery in future. Supplementary systems of recording and storing records of trials are still required and ought to be implemented in order to avoid such delays."

Although Mr. Reynolds, a labourer of Donmair Close, Kingston 8, was not successful in gaining his freedom, the court ruled that by virtue of the long delay, his constitutional right under section 20(1) of the Constitution, to a fairhearing within a reasonable time, was breached. However, the court dismissed his appeal, stating that the case against him was strong. He was convicted in the Home Circuit Court on March 20, 1997 of the chopping murder of Carl Simpson, which occurred on February 14, 1993 at Blackwood Terrace, off Red Hills Road, St. Andrew. He had been sentenced to life imprisonment and ordered to serve 18 years before being eligible for parole.

Last week, Mr. Reynolds wrote to The Gleaner querying what legal steps he could take to get redress from the Government in view of the Court of Appeal's findings that there was a "breach of my rights under the Constitution".

Positive results

But it seems that the cries for justice from litigants in civil cases is finally getting some attention. In September 2006, the Rules Committee amended the Civil Procedure Rules of the Supreme Court, paving the way for certain categories of civil suits to go to mediation at the Disputes Resolution Foundation (DRF). Some members of the public have hailed the move. Attorney-at-law Donna Parchment, executive director of DRF, described it as a 'revolutionary path' and is optimistic that mediation will significantly reduce the number of new cases on the court lists. She said meditation would be of potentially less cost to litigants but "the main objective is to have them disposed of in a timely manner."

In Canada, there had been a 40 per cent reduction in caseload because of settlements through mediation, she said. Carole Excell, mediation manager at the DRF, said the new rules would benefit the justice system. The Supreme Court referred 41 cases to the DRF in January in accordance with the amendment. Prior to the amendment, the DRF had over the years been doing its fair share in disposing of cases sent to it from the Petty Sessions Court, the Resident Magistrates' Courts and the Supreme Court, when parties agreed to mediation.