When your heart gives out,
and you die ten times on the operating table, it is usually a good sign that it
is time to retire from the practice of law. That is what happened to me.
I
can still remember Dr Terry Isaacs, Maggie’s gynaecologist, settling me onto
his examination couch in Kingstown, St Vincent, with the words, “Well, Don,
I’ll do my best, but you are the wrong gender, and I will be examining the
wrong end.” Terry was the only doctor I
knew in St Vincent at the time, so my choices were limited. He had been President of the Grenada Family
Planning Association (from which island he originally hailed) at the same time
as I had been President of the St Kitts-Nevis Family Planning Association back
in the 1970s, and we met from time to time at Caribbean Family Planning
Association regional conferences.
He
listened on his stethoscope for a few minutes, then said, “Don, you have the
heart rate of a teenage Somali long-distance runner. That would be very good if you were a teenage
Somali long-distance runner. But, since
you are a sedentary, middle-aged, West Indian lawyer, I think you should go to
see a specialist.” With that, he
dispatched me to be examined by Geoff Massay in Barbados.
Geoff
is a brilliant surgeon, and he undoubtedly saved my life. I remember him intently reading the notes his
nurse had made on a pad, then looking up and saying, “Your heart is beating
only 45 times per minute.”
“Is
that good or bad”, I asked. He shook his
head, “Lawyers and lizards, we always knew both of you required very little
oxygen.” He explained that was half what
it should be. His theory was that it had
been slowing down over a long period of years, which is why I had learned to
adapt to the reduced blood flow.
After
that he put me on the operating table in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in
Bridgetown and inserted my pacemaker. He
put it on the right hand side of my chest. He said as he did so, “Not to worry, Don. Usually with lawyers we find no heart at all.
At least you have one, even if it is on
the wrong side.”
That
is when I died and retired from law and went to heaven as a judge in St
Vincent.
Years
later, Chief Justice Dennis Bryon told me of the shock he received when he got
his first pay cheque as a judge in Antigua.
His two sons’ school fees in Barbados were more than the total amount of
the judge’s pay cheque. He had to bring
them back home immediately. In my case,
my salary cheque for my first month as a judge in St Vincent did not cover
Maggie and my wine bill at Gonsalves Liquors.
In our case, it was the liquor bill that was the shock. It turns out that liquor is several times
more expensive in St Vincent than it is in Anguilla.
The
remuneration of an OECS judge has always been skimpy, compared to earnings in
the private sector. My salary cheque in
St Vincent was only a few hundred dollars more than I used to pay one of my
secretaries in Anguilla before I closed my law practice. Conditions improved a few of years later when
the Prime Ministers agreed with Chief Justice Dennis Byron’s request to double
judges’ salaries. I trust it has been
doubled again. They cannot continue to
rely on a supply of half-dead lawyers being available to fill the bench of the
Easter Caribbean Supreme Court.
After
two and a half years in St Vincent, with spells in Grenada, St Lucia and
Dominica, the Chief Justice moved me to Antigua. There I was to spend another two and a half
years, with spells in Nevis, St Kitts, Montserrat, Anguilla and Tortola. The amount of work was overwhelming. I remember asking the Chief Justice why he
kept sending me to places where there was so much work to do. His response was, “Don we are both
Kittitians. Kittitians really know how
to cut cane.” Which, I think, was his
way of telling me not to be a wimp, but to soldier on.
I
think I did well to survive doing the job for five years. I was ready to go after four. But, I hung on for five, because I had been
told by head office in St Lucia that five years would ensure I got a pension, or
at the very least a gratuity. Four years’
service would not count. Five years
would be necessary for there to be a little reward at the end of the day.
After
five years on the bench, I was completely exhausted. I was dropping things and forgetting other
things. I went to see the premier psychiatrist in Antigua, Dr James King. I told him that I was very worried, as I was
in the terminal stages of Alzheimers. He
asked me why I was seeing him if I already knew what my problem was. I explained that I needed a second opinion. I don’t still don’t know why he laughed so
much.
He
took pity on me and gave me an examination. I had to answer a lot of questions and do
various memory tricks. At the end of it,
he explained to me that I was not suffering from Alzheimers. I was merely, he said, an aging
obsessive-compulsive. Apparently, when
you are a young obsessive-compulsive that is not such a bad thing. He explained that he would much rather have an
obsessive-compulsive lawyer worrying over his clients’ legal problem than have
one who laughed and relaxed all the time while mailing out his bills.
The
problem with being an aging obsessive-compulsive is that your body cannot
answer to all the demands it was able to handle in younger years. The body begins to rebel when you decide to do
two trials a day, and one hundred Chamber matters on Friday morning. Since it takes two days to prepare for one day
of Chamber matters, that means staying up to all hours of the night reading
files and making notes about their contents. One did that in between writing the
judgments. I managed it for the first
few years, and then it became too much.
We
were told we had to write our judgments within three months of the end of hearing
a case. For me, that was too long a
period. Every time I waited three
months, it was a disaster. I had to read
every file and every note all over again. Within a few days, I forgot that the trial had
ever taken place, far less what had been said in it. It was like I had never seen the witnesses nor
heard the evidence. I found I was better
off writing every judgment within a day or two of the end of the trial. According to Dr King, such panic at increasing
forgetfulness was the natural result of an aging obsessive-compulsive believing
that he could continue to bite off more than he could chew.
The
doctor recommended that I take a long holiday. What did he mean by a long holiday? Six months, he suggested. Needless to say, being an obsessive-compulsive,
I applied for a year off. To my
astonishment, the Judicial and Legal Services Commission granted it. On reflection, they must really have been glad
to see my back. So, we packed up the
dogs and possessions, gave up the house in Antigua, and flew back to Anguilla
to enjoy a year’s unpaid leave.
After
six months resting, gardening, reacquainting myself with family and friends, I was
thoroughly enjoying myself. You can
imagine what I did next. I compulsively
wrote to the acting Chief Justice, Adrian Saunders, submitting my resignation. I realised I had had enough. There was no way I was going back to that
heavy burden of obsessively trying cases and worrying about the state of injustice
in Antigua and Barbuda.
It
would have been nice if there had been the promised gratuity at the end of it. It turns out you have to work for at least ten
years to expect to receive anything under the Pensions Act of Anguilla. Or so our resident pensions expert of Anguilla,
Marie Horsford, explained. I did not
fight it. There was no client to pay my
fees for going to court for the gratuity I had been promised. I compulsively and immediately forgot about
pension or gratuity.
Since
then, I have been obsessively enjoying myself teaching CAPE law three half-days
a week in the High School in Anguilla. I
have 18 students this year. I fill in
the spare time between classes providing a free legal aid clinic three
half-days a week out of the Welfare Department.
I
call it practising stress-free law.
Originally written for the
OECS Bar Association, as its former Secretary during the period 1989-1999, for publication
in its 20th anniversary commemorative magazine. Subsequently delivered as an after-dinner
speech to the Anguilla Bar Association.
