Former Justice of Appeal in Seychelles passes away ‘Baby’ Venchard – An obituary

Louis Edwin (Baby) Venchard Q.C., died at his home in Curepipe, Mauritius on Christmas Day 2002. Formerly Solicitor-General of Mauritius, Baby Venchard will be remembered in Seychelles for the 5 years he spent as a Justice of Appeal of the Seychelles Court of Appeal. I had the privilege of appearing before him and, after he left the Bench, becoming his friend. It was a friendship I treasured.

Baby (to his friends; I insisted on calling him Mr Venchard, much to his annoyance) was a man of considerable intellect and had a photographic memory. He could cite judgments verbatim and remember pages of law reports. Quick to grasp the fundamentals of an argument, he was easily bored with anything extraneous to the important elements of a case. He had the ability to seize on what mattered quickly and make abstraction in his mind of anything superfluous. This is a characteristic of very good lawyers, and Baby Venchard was a very good lawyer indeed. The other attribute of good lawyers is an ability for sustained hard work. Baby had this. His books were written in record time and against impossible self-imposed deadlines. I remember consulting him on behalf of clients and on occasion both here and in Mauritius working through the day without a break to develop a submission and get it written.

In Mauritius, the legacy of Baby Venchard is more tangible as he leaves behind a number of legal publications. Together with his colleagues Sir Victor Glover (former CJ of Mauritius) and Professor AH Angelo of the University of Wellington, Baby has edited a Code Civil Annoté, the Code de Commerce, a set comprising the Criminal Laws of Mauritius and the Mauritian Labour Laws. The team has also edited the Laws of Mauritius and the Mauritius Law Reports for several years. But the real labour of love of Baby Venchard was to update the Mauritius Digest which a predecessor of his both as Solicitor-General of Mauritius and Justice of Appeal of Seychelles, Gerard Lalouette, had published in Mauritius in 1950. To get into training for this Herculean task (25000 judgments are digested) Baby Venchard and his two colleagues spent some time in 1996 doing the same for Seychelles. Out of this “The Laws of Seychelles Through the Cases” was published comprising all Seychelles Court decisions from 1936 to 1996.

Baby is survived by two sons, Gavin, a dentist in Newcastle, U.K., and Indren, an accountant in Port Louis, as well as by three granddaughters.

Source - Seychelles Nation