The assistant judicial support officer who failed to forward information relating to the filing of a defence to the attorneys of Opposition leader Dr Keith Rowley in the E-mailgate defamation lawsuit has been reassigned.
This was confirmed by judiciary sources yesterday who also confirmed that Justice Frank Seepersad on Monday recused himself from the lawsuit brought against Rowley by Attorney General Anand Ramlogan.
This follows the controversial granting of judgment in default against Rowley by Assistant Registrar Candice Cielto-Jones on January 14 after he failed to meet the court’s deadline to file his defence.
However, Rowley’s attorneys were not informed that Seepersad had on December 16 made a determination in their application for an extension of time for the filing of the defence and that January 7 was the deadline.
Sources said the judge was also taken by surprise when he found out that the information was not relayed to Rowley’s attorney.
T&T Guardian was told that when the judge heard about the matter via the news media he immediately contacted the Judiciary and called for an investigation.
Sources close to the judge said: “It was clear that the order was not served on the defendant. The judge’s JSO Stacy Seemungal, on his instructions, sent an e-mail to the lawyers informing them that the judge was satisfied that there was no service of the document.
“The assistant JSO was immediately removed from the judge’s team and the judiciary issued an statement stating that an internal investigation into the matter would take place. The JSO had the responsibility to inform the parties and she did not. The truth of it is that at the end of the day it was the week before Christmas and she forgot. That is not good enough. The Attorney General would not have known that they (Dr Rowley) did not know about the deadline and they filed an application for judgment in default. The registry did not do the necessary checks to determine if the judge’s order was served.”
Asked why Seepersad stepped down from the E-mailgate matter if he was not at fault, the judicial source said: “His decision to recuse himself was made since Monday. He took the decision because of the public debate regarding the issue and to preserve the perception of impartiality. Judges don’t serve orders, but there is inaccurate information in the public domain. Justice Seepersad did not issue any order of judgment in favour of the claimant.
Given the public debate on the matter, he said the judge did not think it appropriate to continue in the matter.”
It was at last Thursday’s post-Cabinet news conference that Ramlogan announced the E-mailgate judgment in his favour, declaring that he was victorious and called for an apology from Rowley.