High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad has warned at­tor­neys and lit­i­gants to be pre­pared to re­turn to phys­i­cal court­rooms for tri­als of civ­il law­suits.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad is­sued the warn­ing yes­ter­day, as he was forced to ad­journ a tri­al, which had been post­poned three times in the past, due to one par­ty and their lawyers not be­ing present in-per­son at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain.

While Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that vir­tu­al court hear­ings, which were in­tro­duced dur­ing the covid-19 pan­dem­ic, were still use­ful for emer­gency ap­pli­ca­tions and case man­age­ment con­fer­ences, he sug­gest­ed that such were nev­er ide­al for tri­als that re­quire judges to make find­ings based on facts es­tab­lished through the tes­ti­mo­ny of wit­ness­es and cor­re­spond­ing cross-ex­am­i­na­tion.