Dabdoub for court today

Dabdoub

THE COURT of Appeal will have an expedited hearing today in a motion brought by Attorney-at-law Abe Dabdoub, who is challenging Solicitor-General Michael Hylton's opinion that he should not be sworn in as Member of Parliament for North East St. Catherine until an appeal filed by Phyllis Mitchell has been heard and determined.

R.N.A. Henriques, Q.C., who is representing Mr. Dabdoub, the JLP candidate who Justice Basil Reid declared winner of the constituency on June 29, reversing the 1997 General Election result, will be asking the Court of Appeal to determine if there is a stay of execution of the court order in place.

The Court of Appeal, comprising President the Hon. Ian Forte, Justice Ransford Langrin and Justice Clarence Walker, is being asked to clarify the purported stay of execution pending the hearing of Mrs. Mitchell's appeal.

Lawyers representing Mrs. Mitchell, the PNP candidate, last week withdrew their summons in the Supreme Court for a stay of Justice Reid's order pending the determination of the appeal. The summons was withdrawn on the ground of advice from the Solicitor-General that once an appeal was filed in an election petition, it operated as a stay of execution.

Mr. Dabdoub's lawyers will be arguing that there is now no stay of execution in place because only the court can grant a stay. They will also be arguing that the 1967 case of Brown vs. The Trelawny Parish Council, on which the Solicitor-General based his opinion, is irrelevant and therefore cannot be relied on as a precedent.

It is also being contended that when Mrs. Mitchell's lawyers withdrew the summons, they circumvented the process of the court and relied on the opinion of a member of the Executive (the Solicitor-General).

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