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Senior Counsel Anthony Astaphan in a 2016 iWN photo.
Senior Counsel Anthony Astaphan in a 2016 iWN photo.
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The High Court will today (Friday) continue hearing legal arguments on whether to grant leave for public sector unions in St. Vincent and the Grenadine to bring a constitutional motion against the COVID-19 vaccine mandate that came into effect last December.

At the hearing last Friday, High Court judge, Justice Esco Henry, heard the arguments of the claimant, and the respondent were 10 minutes into their submissions when the hearing was adjourned for the day.

“Essentially, we presented our argument. Our argument was presented by female Dominican attorney, Cara Shillingford and Cara went on for like close to one hour and 45 minutes and then Senior Counsel Astaphan started his presentation, he went for like about 10 minutes before the court adjourned,” Counsel Jomo Thomas, a lawyer for the claimants, told iWitness News.

Last December, the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Teachers’ Union, the Public Service Union and the Police Welfare Association, filed legal documents asking for judicial review of the government’s decision.

They have also filed a constitutional challenge to the mandate.

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The mandate has seen hundreds of public sector workers lose their jobs and accrued benefits over their failure to get vaccinated against COVID-19, as mandated by a law passed by the Cabinet.

Thomas has expressed confidence that his clients will triumph.

“We have very, very strong confidence in the judges who sit in the civil division that they would look at our filings, they would look at, evidently, what the other side is coming with —  And they are coming with very experienced counsel in … Senior Counsel Astaphan, but we are never concerned so much with the experience or the person who’s coming,” he told a press conference in December.

“We are fundamentally concerned with the law. And we think once we match law to law, the court would come away thinking that our filing, our application or motion is in keeping with the law, and, therefore, that is the basis on which we premise our confidence in this case.”

However, even before the legal challenge was formally launched, Astaphan, a Dominican senior counsel,  expressed confidence that the government would triumph.

The unions have brought the lawsuit even as regional and international courts have continually ruled in favour of governments and their vaccine mandates.

Thomas, however, said there are a number of things that are different about the union’s case.

“We believe that section 5(1), section 8(1) and section 8(2), which brings the declaration of who are the persons who are labelled ‘frontline workers’ and ‘the dismissal, we think when you look at those, there is broad overreach in terms of what the state purports to do,” he said in December.

3 replies on “Lawyer to complete submission in vaccine mandate lawsuit case”

  1. SVG Wurlitzer Bass, rememba dat afta de dust settlo, win or lose,yo haf fo pay me in US dollars … no EC dol az .

  2. The unprecedented mandates are clearly immoral and illegal. Because many other country’s leaders are attempting the same moves, directed from their “World Boss” leaders and billionaires of the WEF, does not mean the very weak leader of SVG has to copycat. SVG and other “democratic” nations should be republics that derive mandates from the people, not against them. Look at the very weak cowardly leaders of Canada, New Zealand and Austrailia today. Would anyone use the word “democracy” to describe those places? The term also no longer fits to SVG. That is when you know a different and worse form of government has taken over. If the courts do not see and return us to reason, the democratic society will be gone, and be very difficult to get back.

  3. Whenever you find the government bringing this man to SVG you can be sure they are in the wrong and want to make wrong right. SVG has paid this man millions to date and it should stop.

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