Guyana’s civil courts set to benefit from Commonwealth workshop

A workshop aimed at increasing the efficiency of Guyana’s judiciary will be held in the country from 19 to 23 November 2007.

The workshop, facilitated by the Commonwealth Secretariat, will enable Guyana’s courts to devise new civil rules of procedure -- instructions about the preparation and presentation of legal documentation within the courts.

These new rules are designed to implement new case flow management procedures into the civil jurisdiction of the senior courts in Guyana. With these new techniques the judges will be equipped to mitigate unnecessary delays in the litigation process by using their “judge control”. This is a major step in reducing long delays in the hearing of civil cases.

The Commonwealth Secretariat’s consultant facilitating the workshop is David Gladwell. He is an ex-Registrar and Master of civil litigation at the UK’s Appeal Court who has significant experience in implementing new procedural rules.

He will assist Guyana’s Supreme Court, drawing from his experience with Lord Woolf’s reforms that he helped implement within the UK. Lord Woolf’s reforms are a generic set of legal reforms that took place within the UK’s civil courts during the late 1990’s.

Mr Gladwell will provide advice to the Rules Committee of the Guyana Supreme Court on the implementation process of these new rules, which include training for court staff, the judiciary and the legal profession, as well as advising on a public education campaign.

Kevin Maguire, Legal Adviser in the Justice Section at the Commonwealth Secretariat, said: “The implementation of new rules of civil procedure that give the court control of the litigation process is vital in ensuring that there are no unnecessary delays caused by the parties to civil litigation.”

“Processes in the new rules such as compulsory mediation will also help to ensure that cases that are capable of settling are settled without a court hearing. This will help reduce delays in the hearing of cases as it will allow the courts to concentrate on hearing only those cases that cannot be settled by agreement,” he added.

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