Was Case Against Pitts Motivated by Malice?
The case, according to Elrington, was clear-cut and straightforward. He says that after poring over the facts presented, it would appear that in the absence of evidence of wrongdoing, the claim against Pitts was driven by an intent to do harm to her reputation.
Hubert Elrington, Attorney-at-law
“There is absolutely no technicality involved in this. Even a person who has graduated from Standard 6, maybe even Standard 4, primary school, can read this and see that the Court of Appeal said that, look, where the minister issues a fiat, whether it is a lease fiat or a grant, freehold, that that conveys a right or an interest that has value and because it has value and because the wrong originated in the government’s office, not in the office of the client, or Ms. Sharon Pitts, then the government is that one that is to blame if anyone is to blame. So no right thinking Belizean or any other person after reading this judgment or after reading the Andre Vega judgment could have come to the conclusion that Ms. Sharon Pitts had behaved improperly. So why did the attorney general and her staff come to that perverse and highly damaging conclusion? That is the issue. I was dealing with one thing and one thing only: Did Sharon Pitts act improperly in any way? Was there any dishonesty? Was there any fraud? Was there any violation of high moral standings and ethics on her part? And I could not find not even a scintilla, not even the smallest fraction of evidence to show that in all her dealings, she was anything but professional and of high moral standing. So how the attorney general and the attorney general’s ministry came to just the opposite conclusion appears to me to be motivated by malice and nothing else.”