The 2014 sessions for the Court of Appeal ended today and there were several long awaited judgments passed for both criminal and civil cases.
One of the main civil cases was the case with former Secretary General of the Belize Communications Workers Union, Christine Perriott who was fired by the then owners, the Ashcroft Alliance in 2007.
In 2010, she was vindicated when the Supreme Court found that she had been wrongfully terminated - and was granted compensation of over $350,000 thousand dollars.
By then BTL had been taken away from Ashcroft and nationalized.
The effect of that was that those who had been fighting the Alliance shoulder to shoulder with Perriot in 2007 - were now running BTL - such as her former lawyer, Lois Young Barrow who, by 2010, was BTL's attorney.
So, Perriot had no problem getting paid what the court had ordered.
In fact in October of 2010, BTL made out a cheque to Perriott's attorney for $426,773.76 - the judgment, plus interest. But, Perriot refused it. Now, we'd imagine, it isn't easy to walk away from a cheque already cut for just short of half a million dollars, but Perriott challenged Justice Muria's decision because of discrepancies in the court's calculations - the total figure by her reckoning should have been higher.
But, in the end, it did not work out in Perriott's favor: instead of being increased, the compensation figure was dramatically reduced - by over 50%. Attorney for BTL, Michael Young discussed the outcome of the case with us today.
Michael Young, Attorney, BTL
"The appeal itself, we did not contest that the finding that she was dismissed as a result of her work with union we only contested the amount of damages that was awarded and we were successful in that regard and the court reduced the cost from over $300,000 to some $123,000 with of course with interest."
"Well that the damages that was awarded was excessive and we thought it was excessive on the basis in particular by a decision of the CCJ, I haven't read the judgment as yet because I just received it but I believe it will be the case that the Court of appeal agree to that position."
To be clear, the court originally awarded 350 thousand dollars plus interest in 2010, and the court of Appeal has now reduced that to 123 thousand plus interest - a 65% decrease.
Perriott is currently living in the United States and was not here for the delivery of the judgment.
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