Reef Pacific Trading Ltd v Price Waterhouse [1998] SBHC 52; HC-CC 167 of 1997 (3 February 1998)

HIGH COURT OF SOLOMON ISLANDS

Civil Case No. 164 of 1994

REEF PACIFIC TRADING (THE COMPANY) & JOAN MARIE MEINERS

-V-

PRICE WATERHOUSE (THE FIRM), RICHARD ANTHONY BARBER (PARTNER) & WILLIAM DOUGLAS McCLUSKEY (PARTNER)

High Court of Solomon Islands
(LUNGOLE-AWICH, J)

Hearing: 15 August 1997
Pronounced: 3 February 1998

J Meiners on behalf of the plaintiffs
S Patrick for the defendants

DIRECTION ORDER (RECUSAL)

(LUNGOLE-AWICH, J): On 12.6.1997 I made direction orders with a view to bringing this case to an early date of hearing. The plaintiffs were to file bundle of pleadings within 40 days and several steps were to follow therefrom. The plaintiff was then to file certificate of readiness for trial within 4 months of the order for directions, made on 12.6.1997. I have noticed a bundle of pleadings on the file, but I am not sure whether the other directions have been complied with. This case should have been pursued faster than that has been done. It was filed in 1994; to date certificate of readiness has not been filed despite the order to do so within 4 months from June 1997. There have been several unnecessary interlocutory application leading to protracting pleading. Other events have now caught up with the case.

I had hoped that I would be able to try the case, since I decided the interlocutories, but now I am not in a position to do so. In May 1996 I was subpoenaed to testify before a commission of inquiry, the Commission of Inquiry into Corruption, whose term of reference included the subject of earlier cases of Reef Pacific Trading Limited, one of the plaintiffs in this case. I was to testify about the business of the office of the Registrar of the High Court, an office I had held. Much of what was solicited from me concerned the plaintiffs’ cases before my time, but most of the parties in those earlier cases have remained the same as in this case. The facts that were in issue in the earlier cases, in my view are not totally irrelevant in this case. I have not read the long awaited report of the Commission of Inquiry and although nothing particularly adverse to me personally has been said in the report, some adverse comments have been made about the office of the Registrar, in favour of Reef Pacific Trading Limited. I held the office of the Registrar recently and still carry out some of the Registrar’s duties. It is my view that I should not continue to preside in cases in which Reef Pacific Trading Limited and the several people who were parties in subject of 10 (ten) other cases involving Reef Pacific Trading Limited. I therefore recuse myself from the trial of this case and direct that this case file together with this direction order be placed before the Chief Justice who may decide reassignment. It follows that the two applications, one for amendment of statement of claim and the other for taking evidence outside this jurisdiction are postponed until such time that this case file has been reassigned. No order as to costs.

Pronounced in Court and
Dated this 3rd day of February 1998
At the High Court
Honiara

Sam Lungole-Awich
Judge