The T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) has been or­dered to pay over US$783,000 (es­ti­mat­ed TT$5.4 mil­lion) in com­pen­sa­tion to its for­mer tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Kendal Walkes. 

De­liv­er­ing an oral judge­ment at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, on Fri­day, High Court Judge Joan Charles ruled that the TTFA wrong­ful­ly dis­missed Walkes in March 2016. 

Charles re­ject­ed claims from the TTFA that Walkes con­tract should be deemed void be­cause it was signed by one wit­ness as op­posed to two and it con­tained in­com­plete para­graphs. 

"I had no prob­lems in find­ing that a valid con­tract ex­ist­ed," Charles said. 

She stat­ed that it was val­i­dat­ed by both for­mer TTFA pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Shel­don Phillips, who tes­ti­fied on Walkes' be­half, and through ev­i­dence over the par­ties con­duct af­ter it was signed. 

"I found it sur­pris­ing that the de­fen­dant would have dis­put­ed the va­lid­i­ty of the con­tract," Charles said.

In her judge­ment, Charles ruled that Walkes, who earned a month­ly salary of US$10,000 and a US$3,000 hous­ing al­lowance, was en­ti­tled to com­pen­sa­tion for the two re­main­ing years on his con­tract as well as for sev­er­al months when he did not re­ceive a salary be­fore his con­tract was even­tu­al­ly ter­mi­nat­ed. 

Charles al­so up­held a clause of his con­tract, which gave him the op­tion to re­new it for an­oth­er three-year term. The de­ci­sion meant that he al­so has to be com­pen­sat­ed for that pe­ri­od. 

As part of her judge­ment, Charles or­dered the TTFA to pay Walkes' le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the law­suit and two and a half per cent in­ter­est on the com­pen­sa­tion. 

Tes­ti­fy­ing in a tri­al be­fore Charles in May, Walkes, a youth coach from Penn­syl­va­nia, USA pro­vid­ed de­tails over how he got the job in 2015. 

Ac­cord­ing to Walkes, he was coach­ing in the Unit­ed States Vir­gin Is­lands, when a col­league from the State As­so­ci­a­tion for Youth Soc­cer in Penn­syl­va­nia rec­om­mend­ed him for the job based on his ex­pe­ri­ence and his Trinida­di­an her­itage. 

Walkes claimed that he had a tele­phone in­ter­view be­fore be­ing in­vit­ed for an­oth­er while he was in Trinidad to at­tend his sib­ling's fu­ner­al in Feb­ru­ary 2015. 

He claimed that he was of­fi­cial­ly of­fered the po­si­tion dur­ing the meet­ing with Tim Kee, Phillips and na­tion­al team man­ag­er William Wal­lace. 

Walkes claimed that de­spite ho­n­our­ing the re­quire­ments of his con­tract, he was ter­mi­nat­ed af­ter cur­rent TTFA pres­i­dent David John-Williams took up his post. 

In it de­fence, the TTFA al­leged that it broke the con­tract af­ter Fi­fa of­fi­cials wrote to it and raised is­sues over his re­port­ed TT$93,000 a month com­pen­sa­tion pack­age, in light of the as­so­ci­a­tion's well known fi­nan­cial con­straints. 

Walkes, who re­turned to the Unit­ed States af­ter he was fired, was not in court for the judge­ment and was rep­re­sent­ed by his lawyer Ke­ston Mc Quilkin.

The TTFA was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Mis­sir.