A key appellate court has thrown out a previous multi-thousand dollar compensation award against regional telecommunications giant Digicel, ruling the company was unjustly denied a fundamental right to a fair legal process in the original employment dispute. On 19 May, the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal officially vacated the September 2023 ruling from the lower Industrial Court, which had ordered Digicel to pay former employee Karl Skepple a total of EC$176,500 in compensation for alleged unfair dismissal. The appellate judges have now ordered that the entire dispute be reheard by a newly assembled Industrial Court tribunal.
The case stretches back nearly a decade, to August 2015, when Digicel terminated Skepple’s employment following an internal disciplinary investigation. The company moved to dismiss Skepple after substantiating allegations that he had made unwanted inappropriate sexual advances toward a fellow member of staff. Six years after his termination, in 2016, Skepple launched a formal legal claim against Digicel at the Industrial Court, arguing his dismissal was unlawful and unfair.
In the original 2023 proceeding, the Industrial Court moved forward with its full hearing and ultimately ruled in Skepple’s favor despite the complete absence of any legal representation for Digicel or any company representative to present the firm’s side of the case. The tribunal subsequently granted the former employee the EC$176,500 award, which covered both lost earnings and damages for unfair dismissal.
Digicel immediately challenged the ruling on appeal, arguing that the original Industrial Court tribunal had violated the company’s constitutionally protected right to a fair hearing. The telecom firm’s legal team explained that counsel had requested an adjournment of the original hearing due to an unresolvable scheduling conflict with a separate ongoing matter in the High Court, noting that Digicel’s attorney had only received five full days’ advance notice of the Industrial Court hearing date. That request for an adjournment was rejected by the original tribunal.
After reviewing the appeal, appellate judges concluded that the lower Industrial Court had improperly handled the adjournment request: rather than conducting a full assessment of the merits of Digicel’s reasoning for seeking a delay, the tribunal improperly centered its decision solely on whether Skepple’s legal team consented to the adjournment.
While the appellate court did publicly criticize Digicel for its own procedural missteps in the case, specifically repeated delays in filing required witness statements, judges emphasized that these shortcomings did not forfeit the company’s core legal rights to cross-examine opposing witnesses and present formal legal arguments to the tribunal. In its written judgment, the Court of Appeal underscored that “The right to legal representation and the right to be heard are fundamental entitlements.”
With the original ruling now fully set aside, the entire dispute will return to the Industrial Court for a complete new hearing before a different panel of tribunal members, allowing both parties to fully present their cases in line with constitutional fair hearing requirements.