Jacqueline Cummings, President of the Jamaica Bar Association - file photo
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Jacqueline Cummings
The Jamaican Bar Association has said it will not be getting into a blame game about who is responsible for the backlog of cases in the divorce department of the Ministry of Justice.
The issue was brought up at Wednesday's meeting of Parliament's Public Administration and Approriations Committee by Carol Hughes, Principal Executive Officer of the Court Management Services.
She asserted that part of the problem in the department comes from the backlog of cases which is partly due to errors by lawyers.
But Jacqueline Cummings, President of the Bar Association, has said there can be blame on all sides.
"There are some issues that, yes, we can blame the lawyers for, which are simple errors in terms of human errors, typograpghical errors. But there are other issues in terms of what is the template to use for documentation in the court," she asserted.
She argued that within the legal fraternity, there are differences of opinion with regards to what is relevant or irrelevant in terms of how documents should be formatted.
Ms Cummings said another issue of contention is the length of time it takes for documents to be processed after a correction is made.
She said efforts will be made to address these issues at the next meeting of the Bar Association.
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