‘No sense in appealing it’

People's National Party (PNP) Vice-President Ian Hayles appears set to accept Tuesday's ruling by the Supreme Court, which dismissed his application for leave to apply for judicial review regarding the release of a 2017 Office of the Contractor General (OCG) report.

“There's no sense in appealing it because there is nothing in the report. ... I'm glad the Integrity Commission Act has changed where nobody else will go through what they put me through in terms of anybody can make any kind of mischievous report without any shred of evidence, going after any elected official in this country,” the former Hanover Western member of parliament said in a Gleaner interview on Wednesday.

“There is nothing in the report to say that Ian Hayles or his family did anything wrong … . You can't table hearsay in Parliament and [now] it's hearsay will be tabled in Parliament.”

Hayles brought the case against the Integrity Commission, former House Speaker Pearnel Charles Sr and Senate President Tom Tavares-Finson.

The OCG was subsumed into the Integrity Commission in 2018.

The OCG investigated and prepared the report following allegations of conflict of interest and impropriety in the construction of buildings without the approval of the Hanover Municipal Corporation.

The document was submitted to the Parliament on February 13, 2017, but was blocked from being tabled after Hayles obtained a court injunction restricting Gordon House from making it public pending the outcome of the application for a judicial review.

Tuesday's ruling could clear the way for the report to be tabled.

In the 34-page judgment, which was published on Wednesday, Justice Lorna Shelly-Williams ordered that the application was refused. No order was made on costs.

Justice Shelly-Williams concluded that neither Hayles nor his wife, Charlotte, satisfied the court that they had arguable grounds for judicial review with a reasonable prospect for success.

“I find that the applicants would have alternative remedies in the form of a claim for damages for defamation of character. I further find that the conclusions of the OCG were not irrational as they were reasonable based on the evidence garnered during his investigations.

“Conversely, I do not find that the referrals to the commissioner of police, as well as the director of public prosecutions, amounted to a finding that can properly be the subject of a judicial review, as these entities are expected to independently conduct their own investigations and arrive at their own conclusions and, therefore, would not be rubber-stamping the conclusions of the OCG,” the Supreme Court justice said.

Further, she said that the interested parties were improperly joined as the tabling of the OCG's report can be described as the internal business of Parliament, which is not subject to the jurisdiction of the court.

Hayles noted the justice's conclusion where claims for damages would be better sought, arguing that his wife committed a breach and paid the penalty.

“There's nothing else in the report which was factual. It was laid in mischief, and it will be laid in mischief. So it's water under the bridge. There's nothing there. It's an empty report,” he said, although adding that he was yet to speak with his attorney on how they would proceed.

kimone.francis@gleanerjm.com