The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has ruled that the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court of Appeal lacked jurisdiction to overturn a $25,000 exemplary damages award to a former Transport Board manager who was unfairly dismissed in 2014, in a judgment delivered yesterday.
Anderson Carty, who was employed at the Antigua and Barbuda Transport Board (ABTB) for eight years until October 2014, successfully challenged his dismissal through the courts after being terminated while on approved vacation leave. The Privy Council’s decision reinstates both the exemplary damages and a separate $2,500 award for costs originally made by the Industrial Court.
Carty had been an employee of the ABTB since April 2006, holding several managerial positions, including Human Resources and Training Manager before becoming Operations Manager under a three-year contract set to expire in April 2015.
The circumstances surrounding Carty’s dismissal proved particularly damaging to the Transport Board’s case. While Carty was on approved vacation leave in September and October 2014, the Transport Board issued a memorandum to staff about restructuring due to financial circumstances, but Carty did not receive the notice.
On 3rd October 2014, while still on leave, a newspaper article was published stating that the Transport Board had decided to dismiss several managers including Carty. When he returned to work on 15th October 2014, he received a letter which informed him he was dismissed with immediate effect due to redundancy.
The Industrial Court found several aggravating factors in the dismissal process, noting that Carty “was prevented from collecting his personal items from the employer’s premises and had to resort to making a complaint to the Police Commissioner”.
Additionally, although Carty had a contractual arrangement to repay a government loan through monthly installments of $343.33, “the Employer unreasonably deducted the full outstanding balance of $16,823.37 from his final payment without consulting with him”.
In August 2020, the Industrial Court ruled that this was not a genuine case of redundancy and that Carty had been unfairly dismissed. The court awarded exemplary damages of $25,000, concluding that “the treatment meted out to Mr Carty was harsh and oppressive”.
The Industrial Court identified several grounds for exemplary damages, including that Carty “was virtually dismissed while he was on approved vacation leave”, that “notice of his imminent dismissal was repeatedly published in the media before he received any official notice”, and that “there was a blatant disregard for the principles and practices of good industrial relations”.
The Transport Board appealed to the Court of Appeal, which set aside both the exemplary damages award and the costs order. The Court of Appeal, led by Justice Thom, applied common law principles from the English case Rookes v Barnard, arguing that exemplary damages required conduct that was “oppressive, arbitrary or unconstitutional” by governmental actors.
However, in its judgment delivered by Lord Lloyd-Jones, the Privy Council ruled that the Court of Appeal had fundamentally erred in both its legal reasoning and its jurisdiction to hear the appeal.
“The legislature has taken the view that the statutory test (‘harsh and oppressive or not in accordance with the principles of good industrial relations practice’) justifies an award of exemplary damages,” the Privy Council stated.
Crucially, the Privy Council found that the Court of Appeal lacked jurisdiction to hear the appeal at all.
Under section 10(6) of the Industrial Court Act, “the opinion of the Industrial Court as to whether an employee has been dismissed in circumstances that are harsh and oppressive or not in accordance with the principles of good industrial relations practice” cannot be “challenged, appealed against, reviewed, quashed or called in question in any court on any account whatever”.
The judgment emphasized that this provision “accords special status to the decision of the Industrial Court” and reflects that “appeals will not be allowed against the Industrial Court’s opinion in what is manifestly a highly specialised area of industrial relations”.
The Privy Council rejected the Court of Appeal’s reliance on common law principles, noting that “it is not possible to limit the scope of statutory powers to award exemplary damages by reference to the scope of the common law power to award exemplary damages.”
The judgment highlighted that the Industrial Court Act emphasizes “a special feature of its jurisdiction,” requiring the court to make orders it considers “fair and just” and to “act in accordance with equity, good conscience and the substantial merits of the case”.
“It is most unfortunate that section 10(6) was not drawn to the attention of the Court of Appeal and is not referred to at any point in the judgment,” the Privy Council observed.
The Board concluded: “For these reasons the Board will humbly advise His Majesty that the appeal should be allowed,” reinstating both the $25,000 exemplary damages award and the $2,500 costs order.
The ABTB is required to meet the cost for Carty’s appeal to the country’s final appellate court.