CIG wasting public cash in battle with Doctors Express

(CNS): The recent ruling by the Grand Court forcing government lawyers to hand documents over to Doctors Express is part of a long legal battle that has seen the government waste hundreds of thousands of public dollars. The documents might reveal the reasons why no public official has ever been prosecuted for the unlawful raid at the medical facility and the subsequent cover-ups.

In a recent release, Sam Banks, the director of Doctors Express, said that over the last five years, the government has deployed at least ten lawyers in several legal cases trying to “defend the indefensible and illegal actions of their agents”.

The long-running courtroom battle began after an unlawful ban was imposed on prescription cannabis medicines and an illegal raid on the clinic in 2019. Soon afterwards, Doctors Express applied for a judicial review, which ended in its favour and also exposed serious wrongdoing and collusion by the authorities, including the police, customs and the chief medical officer.

Following the damning findings of the court, the Anti-Corruption Commission conducted an investigation but no charges were ever brought. Therefore, Doctors Express and its associated company, Kaiser Day, applied for and was granted another judcial review to find out why. However, during the process, the Attorney General’s Chambers refused to hand over to the clinic’s lawyers important documents relating to the decision on why no public official was going to be held accountable for the unlawful raid.

Banks said he welcomed last month’s decision by the court ordering the government to reveal this information.

“We live in a country of laws and no one is above the law,” Banks said soon after the ruling was made public. “Decisions of public officials must be exposed to the sunlight of public scrutiny. I am grateful that the Grand Court has rejected the attempts of the Government’s lawyers to suppress the real reasoning behind their decision not to bring charges against those who unlawfully misused the powers of their public offices to target Doctors Express and Kaiser Day.”

Banks explained that since the raid some five years ago, the business has had to “fight the Government at every stage”.

“As a medical facility, we take seriously our commitment to act in the best interests of the public we serve and we expect the Government to share that same commitment. However, for the last five years, the Government has instead wasted vast sums of money from the public purse attempting to defend the indefensible and illegal actions of their agents. At least six Cayman government lawyers and four London lawyers, including three KCs, have been instructed by the Government and the DPP to resist our efforts to
obtain justice,” Banks noted.

But he made it clear the team will continue the fight for justice in the hope that no one else in the Cayman Islands will be victimised by their own government.

“I encourage those responsible for continuing to contest the litigation to carefully consider their position before yet further costs to the public are incurred,” Banks stated.

While the courtroom battle to doscover why no one was held to account for what happened rolls on, Doctors Express confirmed that it was awarded costs on an indemnity basis, which is the type of order reserved only for exceptional cases where the court wants to mark disapproval of the manner in which the losing party has behaved and where the damages can be very high.

How much the government had to pay out has never been revealed, despite warnings by the auditor general that these numbers should not be hidden behind non-disclosure agreements.

Nevertheless, the government continues to chalk up further expenses in this case in an effort to continue keeping a lid on why those shown to have been responsible for the illegal raid have escaped justice.