JEREMY ENRIQUEZ v THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF BELIZE

Summary. The Applicants brought three related applications for special leave to appeal three oral decisions of the Court of Appeal of Belize, each arising from rulings of Hondora J in proceedings challenging the failure of the State to redefine the electoral boundaries of Belize in accordance with the proposals of the Elections and Boundaries Commission. In the High Court, the judge dismissed an application for urgent interim relief and made directions personally against counsel for the Applicants. He thereafter issued a wasted costs order requiring counsel to pay personally half of the legal costs incurred by the Attorney General. Further, of his own motion and without hearing the parties, the judge made an ex parte order restraining publication and requiring further information from counsel. The Court of Appeal upheld preliminary objections in each matter, striking out two notices of appeal as nullities and denying leave in the third. In BZ/A/CV2025/003, the issue was the validity of the notice of appeal filed against the High Court's order dismissing the application for interim relief. The Court of Appeal, by a majority, had held that an order is perfected only when signed and sealed by the Registrar, such that the notice of appeal, filed before that step, was a nullity. This Court held that the words ‘signed, entered or otherwise perfected’ in s 202(1) of the Senior Courts Act operate disjunctively: any one of those steps is a sufficient statutory trigger for the filing of an appeal. Applying a purposive approach to statutory construction, the Court reasoned that the purpose of s 202(1) is to prescribe a time limit beyond which an appeal may not be filed, and that Parliament could not have intended to preclude or thwart the filing of appeals in circumstances where the order has been signed by the parties and the judge but has not been signed and sealed by the Registrar. The Court further observed that access to justice is a fundamental concept deeply rooted in the constitutional principles of the rule of law and the protection of the law. The majority of the Court of Appeal was accordingly held to have fallen into error in unduly restricting access to justice in this case. The order signed by the parties and the judge thus satisfied s 202(1). At its highest, this was an appeal filed prematurely, and the Court of Appeal could have invoked its curative power, consistent with the overriding objective of dealing with cases justly and allow the hearing of the appeal to proceed. In BZ/A/CV2025/004, the issue was whether leave was required to appeal the wasted costs order made personally against counsel for the Applicants. The Court of Appeal had held that a wasted costs order was an ‘order as to costs’ within s 201(1)(i) of the Senior Courts Act, or, alternatively, fell within the residual category in s 201(1)(j), in either case requiring leave to appeal under s 201(3)(b). This Court held, first, that the wasted costs order was a final order within s 201(1)(a) since it finally adjudicated the question of the Appellant’s liability to pay those costs, and that no leave was therefore required. Second, examining the substance of the order, the Court found that a wasted costs order against a legal practitioner is a disciplinary order relating to the practitioner’s conduct, and not in the nature of an ‘order as to costs’ within s 201(1)(i). Third, the procedure adopted by the judge, who proceeded on his own motion without setting out the grounds on which he was minded to make the order, without convening a show-cause hearing, and without giving seven days’ notice of that hearing, as required by r 63.9 of the Senior Courts (Civil Procedure) Rules 2025 (‘CPR’), raised serious questions as to whether the judge respected the Appellant’s due process and natural justice rights, which are embedded in constitutional guarantees of protection of the law and the right to a fair hearing. An interpretation of the Senior Courts Act requiring leave to appeal