An attorney has argued that the legal profession and the public are being disadvantaged by a continuing court battle between a company hired to digitalize court records and the government, suggesting that the case should go to arbitration to avoid further delays.
The lawyer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it appears, based on court documents obtained by this newspaper, that politics may have led to the breakdown of the digitalization project. The attorney added that every effort should be taken to ensure that public access is given to any digitalized records that might exist.
The source's comments come after Guardian Business investigations into the state of the Supreme Court Registry's cause lists and files revealed that a company signed a contract to digitalize the records in 2011.
Benchmark Publishing Company Limited (BPC) was contracted to undertake the scanning, conversion and generation of a searchable database of court records including Supreme Court cause lists and judgments, but claims in a lawsuit that it was hampered in completing its work by a decision by the Registrar of the Supreme Court to order staff to stop providing it with court documents subsequent to July 2012. The contract was a continuation of earlier contracts which provided for it to complete the work in phases.
BPC sued the Attorney General's (AG) Office in late 2012 over alleged breach of contract, unpaid payments said to amount to $560,000 and damages in connection with the matter.
The AG's Office, in a counterclaim, asserted that BPC had not provided key deliverables under the contract. It called for damages for the government over the matter. BPC's president is Aaron "Kiki" Knowles, a close friend and advisor of former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham.
The attorney said of the matter, which was revealed for the first time in Guardian Business yesterday: "You're holding everyone to ransom because you want to prosecute this guy because of his political background. It's so unconscionable if the public has already paid, with public money, for these records to be digitalized, and the records are there. Just let us see them."
They added that the case "might be a good thing to submit to arbitration."
"If you submit it to arbitration, you can get a quicker and cleaner result, and you can stop wasting public money pursuing a legal case which may or may not have any merit."
Last week, legal sources expressed concern over the state of the court records, suggesting that they are in a "shambles". Guardian Business investigations revealed that the Supreme Court cause lists are in a severely deteriorated state, with covers, indexes and even portions of the lists themselves missing or degraded.
This impinges upon attorneys' ability to use the cause lists to generate reliable opinions on title as part of the conveyancing process, given that the cause lists must be searched in order to determine if a property vendor has any liens against their property that should block a sale.
Yesterday, another attorney who handles conveyancing matters suggested that the cause lists and court documents, "paramount" to giving opinion on property title, may have even fallen victim of intentional interference by unscrupulous attorneys or members of the public.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, this attorney argued that by being available in a non-digitalized paper format with easy access by attorneys and other individuals, it is widely believed that this has allowed sections of the records to be intentionally made to go missing.
"It's available to the public, and there are some unscrupulous individuals out there. There are measures in place for people to supervise and oversee the possession of the files, but when documents are available, and any time your only record is a paper record, and that's available to the public, attorneys, and otherwise, there is an opportunity for them to be mishandled."
The source added: "The registry itself has always been susceptible to interference. It is without doubt that almost every law office has either heard or experienced first-hand where a page from a file is either not in the file, or a page from the cause list book is missing; so having an electronic system is something we could've benefited from years ago."
Guardian Business attempted to reach Supreme Court Registrar Donna Newton for comment. On the first occasion last week, Newton was said to be out of office, while on the second, yesterday, phone lines went unanswered at the registry.
Minister of State for Legal Affairs Damian Gomez has argued that the government will "intensify" efforts to address the state of the court records later this year.

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