Court to decide whether to grant monetary damages to former SJPP educator

The Court of Appeal has reserved its decision in a matter brought by veteran educator Valdez Francis following a 2010 judicial review decision by the High Court not to award him monetary damages.

Through his attorney Gregory Nicholls, Francis had brought a judicial review application against the Attorney General and the board of management of the then Samuel Jackman Prescod Polytechnic (SJPP) for the administrative decision to terminate his temporary appointment as coordinator of the SJPP Open and Flexible Learning Centre and reassign him to his substantive teaching post at the St Leonard’s Boys School.

In March 2020, Madam Justice Jacqueline Cornelius ruled that there were egregious acts of public maladministration in the educator’s case and granted him the declaratory relief and quashing orders he sought, but did not award monetary damages.

Appealing the latter decision in a civil application, Francis contended that the principles of good administration required the court to grant an “effective remedy” to meet the justice of the case and one that went beyond the granting of declaratory relief and a non-curative quashing order.

He has asked a panel of Court of Appeal judges – Chief Justice Sir Patterson Cheltenham, Justice Rajendra Narine, and Justice Francis Belle – to set aside the High Court’s decision to “refuse to award him damages to vindicate his public law rights that have been infringed by the public authorities” in the unlawful administrative decision to terminate his temporary appointment and the reversion to his substantive post, after 14 years of secondment in senior administrative posts in the Ministry of Education.

Nicholls is suggesting that the Court consider awarding damages in the region of $50 000 in “non-pecuniary loss” for what he said was the “embarrassment, inconvenience, all of the other dislocations” that his client suffered as a result of “the series of unlawful actions” that put him out of the SJPP.

But Principal Crown Counsel Marsha Lougheed, who is representing the Attorney General in the matter, argued that the judge gave adequate consideration, in their view, to the issue of whether the information before the court warranted the exercise of her discretion to award damages.

“We believe that the issue was addressed adequately within the parameters of the judge’s discretion.

“We disagree with the position taken by the appellant that the judge in any way erred in law or misdirected herself on any of the issues raised by the appellant in his grounds of appeal,” said Lougheed who further submitted that the question that the Court of Appeal has to consider was whether the trial judge erred in law “simply because she refused to exercise her discretion to award a specific remedy sought by the appellant”.

“We submit that the issue as to whether damages were to be awarded to the claimant, now appellant, was entirely within the purview of the judge. Based on the evidence available for her consideration and evaluation, she deemed it not warranted in the circumstances.

“We invite this court to accept the findings of the judge and not to vary the position with respect to the award of damages. It is a discretionary exercise . . . . We submit that the judge was accurate that there was nothing before that court that would warrant an award of damages as required,” she added.

Queen’s Counsel Larry Smith, who is the attorney for the SJPP board of management, adopted Lougheed’s submissions and in putting forward arguments of his own, urged the three-member panel to “find there is no merit in this appeal” and award costs to his client.