CCJ turns down Pile’s application

This comes after Barbados’ highest court, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), turned down her application for special leave to appeal disbarment, saying it had little chance of succeeding.

Justices Denys Barrow, Peter Jamadar and Chile Eboe-Osuji held that after reading the notice of application for special leave and the affidavit in support of that application, both filed on July 29 this year, as well as Pile’s written submissions, they concluded she had “not satisfied the requirements for special leave, in that none of the proposed grounds of appeal has a real prospect of success or reveals an egregious error of law or substantial miscarriage of justice”.

They held that the application for special leave was refused but did not order costs. 

Pile, a 30-year veteran, was sentenced to just under three years in jail, in June 2019 for stealing US$96 008 between April 29, 2009, and October 26, 2010, from Bajan/New Yorker businessman and client Anstey King. 

She resumed practice after her release from prison in January 2023.

In June this year the Court of Appeal ordered that her name be struck off the list of attorneys who are able to practise law in Barbados, after Chief Justice The Most Honourable Leslie Haynes and Justices of Appeal Francis Belle and Margaret Reifer accepted the recommendation from the Disciplinary Committee of the Barbados Bar Association that her name be removed. 

Pile’s disbarment was ordered published in the Official Gazette. 

Chief Justice Haynes, who also warned Pile that she could not act as a junior attorney, also blocked her from touching any of the funds in her clients’ accounts, and ordered the Registrar to summons her, along with the secretary of the Bar Association, to a meeting, within seven days of the disbarment, so as to make arrangements for the production of all the civil, criminal and probate matters in which she had appeared.

The court also ordered her to surrender all  files to the Registrar, within seven days, so the Registrar could make arrangements for them to be collected by the clients.

In addition, Pile had been ordered to produce, within ten days, a bank statement showing the balance of all her clients’ accounts – the monies received or spent from clients – as of June 16 this year. She was also ordered to produce invoices in relation to the fees owed to her by clients.

The Chief Justice further ordered Pile to file an affidavit of compliance, in 21 days, showing the steps she had taken to comply with the court’s various orders. That affidavit was to be sent to the Bar Association, the Disciplinary Committee, the Registrar of the Supreme Court and the Solicitor General’s Chambers.