By RASHAD ROLLE
Tribune News Editor
rrolle@tribunemedia.net
AN acting senior magistrate taken off the bench after complaints about her conduct told the Supreme Court that WhatsApp messages from the Criminal Bar Committee’s chat group show a concerted effort to remove her, but a judge has now thrown out her second attempt to block the move.
Aniska Isaacs was reassigned in May from the Magistrate’s Court to Deputy Registrar of the Supreme Court. She asked the court to stop the Judicial and Legal Services Commission (JLSC) from enforcing the order that she report to her new post, and to protect her from any consequences of not complying. The JLSC is the commission, chaired by the Chief Justice, that advises on the appointment of magistrates.
Justice Leif Farquharson dismissed the application on October 29 and ordered her to pay the costs of the commission and the Attorney General. He found that nothing material had changed since acting Justice Raynard Rigby refused her first injunction bid on June 30. Ms Isaacs did not appeal that ruling.
Her lawyer, Gia Moxey-Lockhart, put four apparent screenshots of messages before the court. She said they were exchanged by members of the Criminal Bar Committee’s chat group and revealed a concerted effort to remove Ms Isaacs from her posting as Senior Magistrate.
Justice Farquharson said the messages appeared to be undated and their source was unidentified. It was also unclear whether Ms Isaacs took the screenshots herself or received them from someone else. He said some of the lawyers who appear to have written the messages had made the complaints against her that acting Justice Rigby already considered.
“This is not new information,” Justice Farquharson said.
Since her first defeat, Ms Isaacs has been granted leave to bring a judicial review. This is a court challenge to the lawfulness of the commission’s decisions, and it has not yet been heard. The JLSC and the Attorney General did not oppose leave, but they reserved their opposition to any interim relief. Justice Farquharson said that permission to proceed with a claim neither establishes that the decisions were unlawful nor entitles her to an injunction. He said acting Justice Rigby had refused relief for reasons that went well beyond the absence of leave, finding that the balance tilted, in his words, “decisively against the grant of interim relief.”
Ms Isaacs also relied on an email the Registrar of the Supreme Court sent her at about 6.10pm on Friday, July 3. It told her to report to work by 9.30am the following Monday, July 6, and warned that refusing to do so “gives the appearance” of her having taken unauthorised leave of absence. She told the court she did not see the email until July 8.
The email also told her she had not been demoted, that neither her secondment nor her substantive post as Deputy Registrar of the Court of Appeal had been rescinded, and that her salary and benefits were unchanged. She was to report to the Registrar to be given office space and assigned files.
Justice Farquharson said he was not deciding whether any absence by Ms Isaacs was unauthorised. However, he found that the email simply carried out the posting acting Justice Rigby had already considered and declined to block. The commission’s letter of May 27 had contained a reporting instruction of its own.
Ms Isaacs again questioned the Registrar’s dual role as her head of department and as secretary to the commission, and alleged a continuing conflict of interest. Justice Farquharson said the point had already been raised before acting Justice Rigby and that its lawfulness was a matter for the full hearing. Ms Isaacs also described professional and reputational harm. The judge noted that acting Justice Rigby had concluded any reputational harm could be mitigated by an award of damages.
Mrs Moxey-Lockhart argued that the new application was different. She said Ms Isaacs was no longer asking to be returned to the bench immediately, only to stop the commission from implementing her new posting, and that the first bid had been made urgently, before any case was filed. Justice Farquharson rejected the urgency argument. He said that taken to its logical conclusion, it would allow any losing applicant to bring a second application for the same relief simply because the first had been urgent.
“In my respectful view, this cannot be right,” he said.
He also refused to treat her request for protection from disciplinary consequences as a new development. He said it would in substance suspend the same reporting arrangement acting Justice Rigby had already dealt with. However, he said his ruling did not decide whether any disciplinary action brought against her was lawful, and did not prevent a fresh application based on a genuinely new development.
Her offers to give an undertaking in damages, to accept a shorter injunction and to proceed to an expedited hearing did not change the outcome. Nor did the limited time left on her acting appointment.
Ms Isaacs was appointed Deputy Registrar of the Court of Appeal in July 2022. In June 2024, she was seconded as acting Senior Stipendiary and Circuit Magistrate for 18 months, and the secondment was extended for another 18 months last December.
Her troubles began in April after a clash in Magistrate’s Court No 8 with attorney Devard Francis, chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority. Ms Isaacs refused his request for an adjournment, and he left court along with his client. She reported Mr Francis to The Bahamas Bar Association, accusing him of encouraging the defendant to abscond, a claim he denied. Mr Francis then complained about her to the Chief Justice, and five more complaints followed about her handling of adjournments and her approval of bail sureties.
She was placed on administrative leave from April 20. On May 27, at about 11pm, she was emailed that her acting appointment had been rescinded and that she was being moved to the Supreme Court. On June 1, the commission decided not to recommend disciplinary proceedings against her.
In June, acting Justice Rigby found no real argument that the investigation was a “witch hunt”.
Robert Adams, KC, and Bryann Hepburn represented the commission and the Attorney General.
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