CCJ Upholds ERT Unfair Dismissal Decision [1]
On May 7, 2020, The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) delivered its judgment in Chefette Restaurants Limited v. Orlando Harris [3]. In 2014, Mr. Harris was fired by Chefette Restaurants Limited. As stated in a summary [4] of its decision, the case was originally decided in Barbados’ Employment Rights Tribunal (ERT); the appellant appealed first to the Court of Appeal of Barbados, which agreed with the ERT’s decision “that the Respondent . . . had been unfairly dismissed from his employment.” The appellant appealed this decision to the CCJ on the additional grounds that the ERT could not rightfully “[substitute] the reason given by the Appellant for the Respondent’s dismissal with its own” and that the Court of Appeal did in fact have jurisdiction to adjudicate on the Tribunal’s findings (specifically regarding substitution of “reason for dismissal” and the nature of meetings between employer and employee leading up to the latter’s termination). Regarding jurisdiction related to the ERT’s findings of fact, the CCJ found that neither it nor the appellate court could overturn a finding “if . . . [it] passes the Wednesbury test of reasonableness.” While there are instances in which “the ERT . . . [is] entitled to make its own finding of the true reason for the dismissal and reject that given by the Appellant,” the Court decided this was not one of those cases, because “the ERT had found that the dismissal was done for the reason stated by the Appellant before it went on to find . . . what it held to be the ‘real reason’ for the dismissal.” Regarding the fairness of the dismissal, the appellant had not taken all of the necessary steps laid out in the Employment Rights Act 2012 before terminating the Respondent’s employment, “conclusively determin[ing] that the dismissal was unfair.” Lastly, the Court reduced the required compensation amount “to the basic award” because that amount already provides for the “loss of wages” that the ERT had accounted for in its “separate award.”