Supreme Court Decision on Barrow vs. G.O.B. is a Mixed Bag

Barrow’s claim also included the quashing of the commission’s report in its entirety. He was unsuccessful on that front, however, all references to him, as well as Hugo Patt, have been removed from that document.  According to Marshalleck, the decision handed down by the bench on Wednesday was a mixed bag.

Andrew Marshalleck

Andrew Marshalleck, Chair, Commission of Inquiry

“Mr. Barrow succeeded in less than half of his claim for damages, for monetary compensation and even that result, I believe, is exaggerated, it’s too high.  But the commission itself made no submissions with regards to quantum in the court proceedings.  That was a matter for the government, so they’re handling that and they are being expertly advised in relation to that and we will expect that they will act in relation to their expert advice. So we really have nothing else to say about that.  But bear in mind that Mr. Barrow also argued for the entire report to be quashed.  That was rejected, the entire report was not quashed.  We had offered from the very beginning to remove certain statements from it, but they could not agree which ones they wanted removed and insisted on the whole thing being quashed.”

Dean Barrow

Dean Barrow, Claimant

“She is correct if her finding that there was no bias that infected the commission is also correct.  In other words, look at the Hugo Patt case, we never asked for the entire report to be struck down because when the other side conceded that everything about Patt would come out, that was enough for us.  Naima [Barrow], my niece and my counsel, felt, no, that in the circumstances of my case there was bias, apart from, or maybe that helped to lead to the trampling of my rights.  If one succeeds in establishing bias, if the court finds bias then the whole report would have had to have been thrown out.  But the court did not find bias and so, on that finding the law is clear.  If there is no bias, despite the trampling of rights then the claimant is entitled to no more than to have any and everything said about him removed.  The rest of the report can stand and so, as I said, there might be a quibble about whether indeed, on the facts, we did not establish that there was at least an element of apparent bias on the part certainly of the chairman.  But the judge found [that] there was not, we have to accept that.”