The Court of Appeal has ruled against stopping the Government from progressing with the operationalisation of the TT Revenue Authority (TTRA).
On Tuesday, Justices of Appeal Nolan Bereaux and Mark Mohammed, in a majority ruling, upheld a similar decision of Justice Betsy Ann Lambert-Peterson who, in June, refused to grant an injunction to customs officer, Teresa Dhoray, in her constitutional challenge.
Justice Peter Rajkumar dissented.
Dhoray and the Public Services Association (PSA) had appealed Lambert-Peterson’s decision and on Tuesday, there was a split decision with the two judges ruling that Lambert-Peterson was not “plainly wrong” to deny the injunction.
Dhoray is expected to seek permission to take her case for the injunction to the Privy Council.
On June 5, Lambert-Peterson dismissed the injunction application which sought to halt the operations of the TTRA, including the recruitment of staff.
She said after weighing the risks, the State should not be restrained, even by interim relief, from exercising its statutory powers or doing its duty to the public.
She also said to grant it would likely do more harm than good.
On June 29, the judge eventually recused herself from the case after Dhoray filed an application, saying she was not prepared to have the administration of justice trampled on nor did she intend to be a party to it by trying to persuade anyone she will be impartial or unbiased in the case because of her husband.
In their ruling, Bereaux and Mohammed said both sides had accepted there were serious issues to be tried in the case.
Bereaux, who wrote the majority decision, said he did not accept that public officers may suffer undue loss if an injunction was not granted and while “some administrative dislocation will occur” if the TTRA is operationalised, “adjustments can be made.”
“Indeed many may well benefit from the new administrative arrangements which may be liberated from the moribund regulations of the Public Service Commission (PSC).
“Those officers who retire can embrace the many opportunities retirement brings including new business ventures and job opportunity. Moreover, there is no right to guaranteed or continued employment by the State or the preservation of ordinary public offices from abolition.”
He also said that the greater prejudice weighed against the State since the legislation had been passed “in the public interest, for the greater good of TT, by providing what the Executive considered a more efficient system of revenue collection from which it expects greater revenue in-flows.”
“Any negative impact on revenue collection by the grant of an injunction and any adverse effect on the country’s international credit rating, greatly outweighs any prejudice to the appellants in the event that they succeed at trial.”
In considering whose case was stronger, Bereaux said the onus was on Dhoray and the PSA to show the TTRA Act was unconstitutional. “...I express no concluded view on the outcome of the trial.”
It was Rajkumar’s view that Lambert-Peterso
