Practitioners advocate shorter court judgments – TheNigerialawyer

Legal practitioners in Lagos on Thursday called on judges to
depart from the culture of writing lengthy judgments and rulings in
order to save judicial time.

They argued that in the face of overwhelming cases pending in
courts, it was no longer judicious for judges to write judgments
running into over hundred pages.

This argument was made in Ikoyi, Lagos, during the public
presentation of the second edition of Babalola’s Law Dictionary of
Judicially Defined Words and Phrases.

The event attracted the Chief Judge of Oyo State, Justice Muktar
Abimbola, who was represented by Justice Iyabo Yerima; as well as
Senior Advocates of Nigeria, including Mr Uche Obi, Mr Seyi
Sowemimo, Mr Adeyinka Olumide-Fusika and Prof Kayinsola Ajayi, who
was represented by his junior, Mr Olaniyi Osotuyi.

Also present were the Chairman, Nigerian Bar Association, Lagos
branch, Mr Yemi Akangbe; and the Director, Lagos State Office of
the Public Defender, Mrs Yinka Adeyemi, who represented the Lagos
State Solicitor-General.

In his opening remarks, the author, Mr Olumide Babalola,
explained that apart from the public presentation of the Law
dictionary, the gathering was aimed at bringing senior lawyers and
members of the judiciary together to deliberate on the relevance of
lengthy judgments by the courts in the face of overwhelming court
dockets.

He observed that in most cases, most of what makes a judgment
lengthy is the arguments of the lawyers which the judge tries to
narrate before giving his own decision.

Babalola wondered if it was not possible for the judges to do
away with narration of counsel arguments, which he said had on many
occasions created confusion, with some lawyers wrongly taking
arguments of counsel as the decision of the judge.

He said, “Some judgments have close to 100 pages; and from page
one to 99, what you will see are arguments of counsel. The
remaining one page is actually the decision of the court.

“It has happened in court one time, when a counsel cited an
argument of counsel as the decision of the court and it is very
easy to get lost in that when you are reading the entire
judgment.

“I got a judgment in 2017; it was just five pages and a lawyer
called me and said, ‘Are you sure this is the court judgment?’ and
I said yes.

“The lawyer was surprised because what we are used to is having
lengthy judgments. So, when we don’t have lengthy judgments, we
disparage the judge as rather lazy. I keep reading old decisions of
the Supreme Court; some of them, three pages, some five pages,
1976, 1980s decisions of the Supreme Court and they captured the
point.

“So, if that could be done in the past when they didn’t have
this number of cases, I think it calls for deliberation and
recommendation, for the judiciary to see whether we still need to
continue to have lengthy decisions.”

Mr Uche Obi (SAN), who delivered the keynote address, backed
Olumide’s argument in his paper.

He said, “Unduly lengthy and wordy judgments are, in the
considered view of this speaker, elitist and many a times
incomprehensible.

“We should shed the customary thinking that core issues for
determination in every dispute cannot be sufficiently addressed
unless a ‘treatise’ has been written. Observing brevity in judgment
writing, in a constructive and pragmatic manner, will usually be
adequate in distilling the relevant issues for determination.”

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