Dar­ren Ba­haw

The re­gion­al play­ers union, West In­dies Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (Wipa), has with­drawn its chal­lenge to a High Court rul­ing, which has cleared the way for the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) to ne­go­ti­ate di­rect­ly with play­ers.No­tice of Wipa's with­draw­al was filed in the reg­istry of the Court of Ap­peal, Hall of Jus­tice, in Port-of-Spain on No­vem­ber 20.The de­ci­sion al­so means that Wipa will now have to pay the al­most one mil­lion dol­lars in le­gal costs to the WICB which suc­cess­ful­ly won the law­suit.In dis­miss­ing Wipa's law­suit in March, which sought to bind the WICB to com­ply with the Oc­to­ber 2005 Col­lec­tive Bar­gain­ing Agree­ment (CBA) and Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU), for all ne­go­ti­a­tions with play­ers to be ap­proved by the union, Jus­tice Ricky Rahim, re­ject­ed Wipa's claim for US$10m ($64m).The judge found that Wipa's claim was "gross­ly ex­ag­ger­at­ed". He al­so or­dered Wipa to bear the le­gal costs of the WICB in the sum of $555,535.

Wipa claimed that the two agree­ments made the WICB in­ca­pable of uni­lat­er­al­ly ter­mi­nat­ing a play­er's con­tract but rather by mu­tu­al as­sent or through a re­vi­sion of the agree­ments.How­ev­er, the WICB con­tend­ed that the in­ten­tion of the agree­ments were that they would not last in per­pe­tu­ity with­out sub­ject to re­vi­sion and that it was al­ways open for such agree­ments to be ter­mi­nat­ed and sub­ject to change.In March 2012, Jus­tice Rahim dis­charged an in­junc­tion brought by WIPA and or­dered the body to pay the WICB's le­gal costs of $372,450. On March 30, 2011, WICB wrote to WIPA giv­ing no­tice of re­vi­sion of the CBA/MOU by June 30, 2011.WICB al­so no­ti­fied WIPA of ter­mi­na­tion of the CBA/MOU ef­fec­tive Sep­tem­ber 30, 2011 should there be no re­vi­sion. It is this ter­mi­na­tion which was the sub­ject of dis­pute.Dur­ing the tri­al, Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine, a for­mer pres­i­dent of Wipa, and di­rec­tor of the union, had tes­ti­fied that the or­gan­i­sa­tion had suf­fered and con­tin­ued to suf­fer fi­nan­cial harm in light of the WICB's at­tempt to ter­mi­nate the two agree­ments. He said that Wipa had claimed US$5 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for its loss­es as well as ex­em­plary dam­ages. Ram­nar­ine al­so claimed that since the union had got­ten no­tice of the WICB's in­ten­tion to ter­mi­nate the agree­ments, the union had been un­able to se­cure spon­sor­ship to aid its op­er­a­tions.

Wipa claimed that the WICB had il­le­gal­ly at­tempt­ed to uni­lat­er­al­ly ter­mi­nate the agree­ments, which Wipa as­sert­ed could on­ly be ter­mi­nat­ed by mu­tu­al con­sent, re­vi­sion of the doc­u­ments or the dis­pute res­o­lu­tion pro­ce­dure con­tained in the agree­ments.Wipa al­so sought an in­junc­tion keep­ing the agree­ments in force un­til the claim could be heard, which was grant­ed on March 1, 2012.

WICB had dis­agreed with WIPA's as­ser­tion, coun­ter­ing that it was clear that the par­ties had in­tend­ed the MOU/CBA to be ter­minable and that they were ter­minable up­on rea­son­able no­tice.Fol­low­ing the judge's de­ci­sion in March, the WICB stat­ed that the board wished to as­sure that the best in­ter­ests of the play­ers would re­main para­mount. It said it in­tend­ed to en­gage WIPA to chart the way for­ward. In this re­gard, the WICB ex­plained it would not make any fur­ther state­ments.At­tor­neys Dave Kissoon and Sushilla Jadoo­nanan ap­peared for Wipa and Christo­pher and Luke Hamel-Smith and Cather­ine Ram­nar­ine ap­peared for the WICB at the High Court.The WICB had re­tained for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, Fred­er­ick Gilkes and Jean-Louis Kel­ly to rep­re­sent it at the ap­peal.