Court Of Appeal Judges Throw Out Retired Attorney's Claim That A Cayman Judge "Lied"

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By Alric Lindsay

The Cayman Islands Court of Appeal has refused retired attorney Bilika Harry Simamba permission to pursue a judicial-review challenge over the dismissal of his complaint that a Grand Court judge had deliberately lied in a 2019 ruling, describing the allegation as “in truth preposterous” and telling him he had “come to the end of the road.”

In a judgment delivered on June 23, 2026 (Simamba v Ramsay-Hale and Others, [2026] CICA (Civ) 12), three retired Lord Justices of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales — Sir Nicholas Underhill, Sir Stephen Irwin and Sir Patrick Elias — dismissed the renewed application unanimously.

The judges had been appointed by the Governor on a temporary basis specifically because the respondents to the case include the Chief Justice, the Hon. Margaret Ramsay-Hale, the President of the Court of Appeal and other members of the Judicial and Legal Services Commission (JLSC), leaving no local judge able to hear it.

The background

Mr Simamba, a retired Cayman Islands Attorney-at-Law and former Senior Legislative Counsel in the Government’s Legislative Drafting Department (2003–2015), now living in Canada, had sued the Health Services Authority for medical negligence in 2014. The claims were eventually struck out in 2020.

His complaint centred on a judgment given by Justice Ian Kawaley on June 17, 2019. Mr Simamba alleged the judge had told two deliberate untruths: first, in describing how and when Mr Simamba had asked to attend a hearing by video-link from Canada; and second, in summarising his legal arguments on a statutory-immunity point as “statements of broad principle” without mentioning that he had cited 52 authorities.

Regarding the video-link point, Mr Simamba’s case is that Kawaley J knew that that such an application had in fact been made but deliberately said the opposite.

Concerning the citation of authorities, Mr Simamba’s case is that there was a deliberate misrepresentation of his submissions.

Having failed to overturn the 2019 ruling through a constitutional motion, a constitutional petition, an out-of-time appeal, a personal action against the judge, the full Court of Appeal and finally the Privy Council (which refused permission in May 2023), Mr Simamba lodged a formal complaint with the JLSC in December 2023.

The Commission’s Complaints Committee — of which the Chief Justice was a member — summarily dismissed it, and the dismissal was communicated by the Chief Justice in a letter dated February 15, 2024.

Based on the Court of Appeal judgment, the letter stated as follows:

Your 2 December 2023 complaint in respect of Justice Kawaley’s conduct was … considered by the JLSC’s Complaints Committee to which it was referred pursuant to section 3(1) of the JLSC’s Complaints Procedure. The Committee, of which I was a member, undertook a thorough review of the judgments of Justice Kawaley and of the Court of Appeal which considered the several allegations made by you that Justice Kawaley had lied.

The Committee concluded that you were seeking to re-argue allegations which had been comprehensively rejected by the Courts and noted that the Commission is not and cannot operate as a further Court of Appeal for a dissatisfied litigant. The Committee determined, among other things, that the complaint was ‘frivolous, vexatious or unmeritorious’ and raised a matter which had already been dealt with. The Committee recommended that the complaint be dismissed as it did not warrant investigation.

The Commission considered the Committee’s report at a meeting convened on 8 February 2023 and accepted the Committee’s recommendation.

Accordingly, I write to advise that your complaint against Justice Kawaley is summarily dismissed and no further action will be taken. Please find attached hereto a copy of the Recommendation to the JLSC of the Complaints Committee for your records.

The Court of Appeal judgment added:

On 20 February 2024 the Applicant filed the application for leave to apply for judicial review which has led to the current appeal, supported by a short affidavit exhibiting various documents. The decision challenged is the dismissal of the Complaint, and the primary relief sought is an order of certiorari to quash that decision, together with an order that the matter be sent back to the Chief Justice for determination.

McCarthy J (Ag) refused leave in December 2024, and a single judge of appeal, Montgomery JA, refused it again on the papers.

The Court of Appeal’s findings

Representing himself “articulately and with courtesy,” Mr Simamba argued that the evidence that Justice Kawaley had lied was strong enough to require a full investigation. The Commission was represented by Tom Hickman KC, instructed by Crown Counsel Heather Walker.

Working through the thirteen emails Mr Simamba placed “at the heart of his case,” Sir Nicholas Underhill concluded they did the opposite of what he claimed — they “conclusively contradict” his account that he had made a formal video-link request at a January 2019 hearing. The court noted that a correction Mr Simamba himself had asked the judge to make to the draft 2019 judgment was “wholly inconsistent” with the version of events he now advanced.

“The proposition that Kawaley J deliberately lied in the way alleged is in truth preposterous,” the judgment said, adding there was “no conceivable reason” for the judge to have lied, particularly as he had in fact granted Mr Simamba a further hearing. The second allegation contained “nothing whatever,” the suggestion of an intent to mislead being “absurd.”

Applying the so-called Simplex principle — under which relief may be refused where a decision would inevitably have been the same — the court held the complaint would unavoidably have been dismissed as “vexatious, frivolous or unmeritorious,” “without substance,” “manifestly misconceived” and as raising a matter already dealt with.

The judges declined to use the case to decide a wider constitutional question Mr Simamba raised — whether, under section 106 of the Constitution, such a decision should be taken by the Chief Justice alone rather than the JLSC — saying it was “better raised in a case where it makes a real difference to the outcome.”

They also rejected every criticism of how McCarthy J had handled the matter below: allowing the Attorney General’s chambers to file written submissions at the leave stage was a proper case-management decision; hearing the leave application in chambers rather than open court was lawful because it was interlocutory; and an allegation of a “conspiracy” between the Chief Justice, the judge and the Attorney General was “a fantastical allegation for which he produces no evidence whatever.”

“No objective basis”

In the concluding remarks, Sir Nicholas said:

I wish to say in conclusion that, although the Applicant appears sincerely to believe that his allegations against Kawaley J are well-founded, and that the decision to dismiss the Complaint was not only irrational but taken in bad faith, there is no objective basis whatever for that belief or therefore for his belief that the repeated rejection of those allegations shows that the entire judicial establishment of the Cayman Islands is prejudiced against him.

Litigation arising from those beliefs has already occupied the time of the Courts for far too long, and its obsessive pursuit cannot be good for the Applicant either. He has now had the benefit of a two-day hearing before a Court whose members have no connection with this jurisdiction and a judgment which seeks to address all of the principal points which he has raised. It may be too much to hope that he will now accept that his beliefs are ill-founded; but I do venture to hope that he will at least accept that he has come to the end of the road.