PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad – On 19 December 2024, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) dismissed an application for special leave to appeal a decision in Admiralty by the Court of Appeal of Guyana in GY/A/CV2024/003 Andy Duke v The Ship “MT Tradewind Passion”. The reasons for the Court’s decision were issued on 20 January 2025.
The applicant, Andy Duke, who was injured while working on the docks into which the respondent ship collided, had obtained a warrant of arrest for the vessel. Following the execution of the warrant, the respondent obtained the vessel’s release by providing security in the form of a letter of undertaking.
The High Court ordered the vessel’s release on bail upon lodging the letter of undertaking. The applicant appealed this decision to the Full Court which was dismissed. On the hearing of an application for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal, that Court refused to grant leave to appeal finding no merit in the arguments to challenge the High Court’s decision to accept a letter of undertaking as security for the release of the ship.
Thereafter, the applicant sought special leave to appeal to the CCJ. The application was dismissed. The CCJ emphasised that it would only intervene in cases where the Court of Appeal has refused to grant leave to appeal itself when the decision results in a gross miscarriage of justice. In this instance, the CCJ found no potential miscarriage of justice or egregious error of law warranting its intervention as the proposed appeal was academic, the application was non-compliant with the Caribbean Court of Justice (Appellate Jurisdiction) Rules 2024, and the applicant intended to argue issues that were irrelevant to the application.
The matter was determined by the Justices Anderson, Barrow, and Burgess. Jamela Ali SC, Sanjeev J Datadin, Ganesh Hira, and Samuel Glasgow appeared for the applicant and Kamal Ramkarran appeared for the respondent.
The CCJ’s full decision is available https://ccj.org/
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