Privy Council upholds judicial immunity in Hurnam v Veerabudren appeal from Mauritius

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has dismissed an appeal seeking to hold a Mauritian magistrate personally liable in damages for remarks and gestures made during a court hearing, confirming that judicial immunity received from English common law extends fully to judges of the Intermediate Court of Mauritius acting within their jurisdiction.

The judgement, delivered by Lord Ericht on 29 July 2026 on behalf of a panel that also included Lord Sales, Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lord Hamblen and Lord Leggatt, arose from a dispute between Devendranath Hurnam, a self-represented litigant, and PV Veerabudren, the second magistrate hearing his case in the Intermediate Court in April 2019. Mr Hurnam alleged that an exchange over the scheduling of a hearing became acrimonious, culminating in the magistrate sighing a derogatory term at him, conduct he characterised as malicious and lacking reasonable or probable cause. He brought a claim under article 1382 of the Code Civil Mauricien seeking damages equivalent to roughly £15,950.

Both the Intermediate Court and the Supreme Court of Mauritius dismissed the claim on the preliminary ground of judicial immunity, without any determination of the underlying facts. Mr Hurnam accepted that the immunity principle had been received into Mauritian law but argued that its scope was constrained by the Public Officers' Protection Act 1957, which he submitted allowed magistrates to be sued for acts within jurisdiction where malice and absence of reasonable cause were shown.

The Board traced the reception of English constitutional principles into Mauritian law notwithstanding the retention of French civil law as the general legal foundation following cession to Britain, noting that matters touching the administration of justice and judicial independence fall to be governed by English public law principles rather than the Napoleonic code. Drawing on longstanding authority including Sirros v Moore and the Board's own earlier decision in Haggard v Pélicier Frères, itself an appeal from Mauritius, the judgement confirmed that no action lies against a judge for words spoken or acts done within jurisdiction, regardless of allegations of malice, with the remedy for an aggrieved litigant lying in appeal rather than a claim for damages.

Turning to the 1957 Act, the Board held that section 6, which extends certain procedural protections to actions against magistrates, clerks and court officers, could not be read as narrowing the scope of judicial immunity itself. Because the provision groups judges together with clerks and officers who enjoy no equivalent common law immunity, the Board concluded that it was directed at ministerial and administrative acts rather than judicial conduct within jurisdiction, consistent with the provision's origins in protections historically afforded to justices of the peace performing non-judicial functions. The Board found nothing in the statute's language sufficiently clear or unambiguous to displace the common law principle.

Having resolved the appeal on that basis, the Board declined to address subsidiary arguments concerning whether immunity might separately arise by implication from the Mauritian constitution, or whether the procedural requirements of the 1957 Act operate alongside the distinct prise à partie procedure under the Code de Procédure Civile. The appeal was dismissed, with the Board recording its thanks to counsel on both sides, and particular thanks to those representing Mr Hurnam, who acted pro bono.