AN appeal of the new traffic laws’ demerits point system has been dismissed by the Privy Council.
In a ruling on June 25, Lords Reed, Sales, Hamblen, Leggatt and Lady Rose dismissed Zachary De Silva’s appeal.
They held the Court of Appeal rightly criticised the lack of clarity in the legislation. They also left De Silva’s appeal against his disqualification of his driving permit in the traffic-violation matter to the Court of Appeal.
The London-based court, TT’s final appellate court, had to determine if the local courts got it wrong in determining that the Court of Appeal, and not the High Court, was the proper forum to appeal a decision to disqualify a driver from holding a driving permit after accumulating ten demerit points.
De Silva mounted the challenge to the appeal process of the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Act when he racked up ten demerit points for various traffic violations, including driving with a cellphone, breaching a traffic sign and because his passenger, on one occasion, was not wearing a seatbelt.
He paid the penalties and thought as a result, he would not get demerit points. However, he was told he had accumulated ten demerit points, and of the intention to suspend his permit, and was invited to respond. He did so within the statutory period under the legislation.
De Silva was then told his permit had been suspended. He sought to appeal this decision at the High Court.
A fixed-penalty traffic ticket can be challenged in the magistrates court. However, his attorneys had argued that the MVRT Act allowed for an appeal against such a decision to a “court of competent jurisdiction.”
In February 2021, Justice Frank Seepersad dismissed De Silva’s challenge. The Court of Appeal upheld this decision in August 2021.
Both courts held that those sections of the act on the issue of an “appeal” were poorly drafted, as they did not precisely state the forum for such appeals to be made.
Seepersad had held that an appeal of a decision by the Transport Commissioner to suspend a driver’s licence must be done at the Appeal Court and not the High Court. He also criticised the poor drafting of the legislation.
In a unanimous decision, the Court of Appeal agreed with Seepersad.
The Court of Appeal, comprising Justices of Appeal Alice Yorke-Soo Hon, Peter Rajkumar and Ronnie Boodoosingh, held that it was illogical to infer from the structure of the legislation that one rationale may have been to ease the workload of the magistrates courts by removing from them the administrative aspects arising from a decision that the requisite number of demerit points has been obtained.
At the Privy Council, De Silva’s attorney Christophe Rodriguez argued that the new road traffic regime was different and it would be unusual for an appellate court to hear evidence in the absence of a trial process. He said this was different from contesting a traffic ticket in the magistrates court, which can then be appealed to the Court of Appeal.
In response to the appeal, UK attorney Rowan Pennington-Benton, who
