Derek Achong

For­mer Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John has ap­pealed the dis­missal of her $17 mil­lion un­fair dis­missal law­suit against her for­mer em­ploy­er.

In her no­tice of ap­peal, which was filed late last week and ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, John’s lawyers raised sev­en grounds on which they be­lieve High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran made er­rors in find­ing that the board of the State-agency was en­ti­tled to dis­miss her.

They are con­tend­ing that in his judg­ment in ear­ly Au­gust, Ram­cha­ran failed to prop­er­ly as­sess the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed at tri­al and did not pro­vide suf­fi­cient rea­sons for his find­ings.

A date for the hear­ing of the ap­peal is yet to be set by the Ap­peal Court’s Reg­istry.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, pre­sent­ed in the case, John and sev­en se­nior HDC em­ploy­ees were placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave af­ter a foren­sic au­dit was ini­ti­at­ed by the board short­ly af­ter it was ap­point­ed in De­cem­ber 2015. While the au­dit was still on­go­ing, HDC Chair­man New­man George and his fel­low board mem­bers in­vit­ed John to a meet­ing.

In their de­fence, the board mem­bers claimed that dur­ing the meet­ing on March 21, 2016, John was dis­re­spect­ful to them and dis­missed their con­cerns over the lease of two lux­u­ry ve­hi­cles. She was ter­mi­nat­ed the fol­low­ing day for her “re­ac­tion, de­meanour, tone and man­ner of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the board of di­rec­tors”.

In her tes­ti­mo­ny, John de­nied that she was hos­tile to­wards the board mem­bers and claimed that she was am­bushed in the meet­ing as her re­peat­ed at­tempts to ob­tain an agen­da failed.

In his judg­ment sum­ma­ry, Ram­cha­ran not­ed that while there were no min­utes of the con­tro­ver­sial meet­ing, George gave a more ac­cu­rate ac­count of what tran­spired.

While Ram­cha­ran stat­ed that her con­duct was un­for­tu­nate and un­jus­ti­fi­able, he ac­cept­ed that she would have been jus­ti­fied in feel­ing am­bushed and blind­sided and ruled that her con­duct at the meet­ing was in­suf­fi­cient to war­rant her dis­missal.

How­ev­er, he stat­ed that her be­hav­iour cou­pled with her pre­vi­ous con­duct would have been con­sid­ered by the board in mak­ing its de­ci­sion.

“Every­thing must be tak­en in its prop­er con­text, and the re­ac­tion of the de­fen­dant to claimant’s con­duct at the meet­ing would nec­es­sar­i­ly by in­flu­enced by her pri­or con­duct,” Ram­cha­ran said.

Al­though he said that he did not con­sid­er the au­dit re­sults, he not­ed that the al­leged in­frac­tions al­leged­ly at­trib­uted to John would be in­suf­fi­cient to dis­miss her.

Ram­cha­ran said that even if she was wrong­ly dis­missed she would not have been en­ti­tled to pur­sue the law­suit in the form she did as her con­tract con­tained a clause al­low­ing for ter­mi­na­tion, pro­vid­ed that there was three months’ no­tice.

Through her law­suit, John was seek­ing $7.5 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for her “loss of fu­ture em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties”, $5 mil­lion for dam­age to her rep­u­ta­tion and $1.42 mil­lion for the eight and a half months, which she had left on her con­tract when she was ter­mi­nat­ed.

At the time, John’s month­ly pay pack­et con­sist­ed of a $62,000 salary and $36,000 in al­lowances for trav­el, hous­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and en­ter­tain­ment.

John was al­so claim­ing that she is en­ti­tled to an ad­di­tion­al 24 months salary as such a pro­vi­sion be­came a set­tled prac­tice of the HDC, with re­spect to de­part­ing man­ag­ing di­rec­tors, since the tenure of for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Noel Gar­cia.

John con­test­ed the La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro con­stituen­cy in the Au­gust 10 gen­er­al elec­tion for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) but lost to Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date Fos­ter Cum­mings.

She has since been ap­point­ed an Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor.

John was rep­re­sent­ed by Ger­ald Ramdeen, Umesh Ma­haraj and Dayadai Har­ri­paul. Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, An­tho­ny Bul­lock and Mar­celle Fer­di­nand rep­re­sent­ed the HDC.