Poor time management by some judges is partly to blame for the long wait for decisions, the head of the Caribbean Association of Judicial Officers (CAJO) says, but he insists it would be “unfortunate” if Barbados went the way of introducing legislation to set time limits for judgements to be delivered.
CAJO chairman Justice Adrian Saunders, who is also on the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) panel, believes judges should not have to wait on the law to force them to hand down decisions in a timely manner, as was the case in Guyana where a Time Limit For Judicial Decisions Act was passed.
He was speaking to the SUNDAY SUN amidst complaints from lawyers here that their clients have been waiting up to several years in some instances for judgments.
“It’s not a problem that is unique to any one jurisdiction but it is certainly one which the public is growing more concerned about and one which the judiciaries need to pay more attention to resolving,” Justice Saunders said. “In some case it is a failure on the part of the judge to organize his or her time, so not enough time is set aside for judgment writing.”
