Temporary court setting in Brown’s Town inconvenient, says lawyer
PRESIDENT OF the Northern Jamaica Law Society, Pearline Bailey, says the temporary court arrangements in Brown’s Town are inconvenient for lawyers and other persons using the facility.
The Brown’s Town courthouse was destroyed by fire on February 13, leaving authorities scrambling to find alternative accommodation to house court proceedings.
Immediately after the fire, court sessions were moved to Addison Park. Adjustments were made later wherein criminal court was held at the Brown’s Town Police Station and civil matters at Addison Park.
The St Ann Municipal Corporation has given the Ministry of Justice the green light to refurbish a lower section of the building at Addison Park to use for court and the work is said to be in progress.
But Bailey said the entire arrangement is proving quite inconvenient, especially for lawyers.
“There has been significant inconvenience not only in relation to the delay in dealing with the matters because files have to be reconstructed, but in terms of the accommodations for court, criminal court and civil court, they have been woefully inadequate,” Bailey says.
She continued: “The Brown’s Town Police Station is not a proper place for court, not for witnesses, not for accused; the space is very small, it’s leaking, (there are) only two seats for attorneys, two seats for police officers, where the judge sits, as far as we are concerned, is a security risk for her or whichever judge is sitting there.
“For the civil court at Addison Park, I don’t think that in this age and this time that citizens should be asked to attend court in those conditions,” Bailey added.
Bailey said the inconvenience also includes lack of parking space for court at the Brown’s Town Police Station, and the fact that because criminal and civil courts are held at different locations, lawyers cannot move from one case to another in a timely manner.
“It is a significant inconvenience for attorneys. In the past, you come to court in Brown’s Town you’re at one location, you can do both criminal and civil court, now you have to go to one location, (then) go to the next. If you’re at the other location the judge has to sit and wait on you, it’s not fair to your client and to you to know that you’re in another courtroom through no fault of your own.”
Bailey said she is hoping the temporary location will be available soon to eliminate the inconvenience being experienced.
In the meantime, Mayor of St Ann’s Bay Sydney Stewart explained that the arrangement between the municipality and the justice ministry is for a period not exceeding two years.
A CONSIDERABLE SUM
According to Stewart: “We have given permission to the justice system to host cases at a section of Addison Park; that section we have offered is an area that was in disrepair. The Ministry of Justice has been spending a considerable sum to rehabilitate that section of the building and creating it for the purpose of conducting court, which means transforming some areas into a courthouse setting.
“The understanding is that they are not going to be occupying that space for over a two-year period, it’s under a year, up to a year. It will give the Ministry of Justice time to reconstruct what remains (at the Brown’s Town courthouse),” he added.
Meanwhile, the cause of the fire that destroyed the building has still not been made public. Efforts to get a comment from the fire department on Monday regarding this were unsuccessful.