Yasmine Tyson-Hanley v Envoy Air Inc.

• Jurisdiction: Saint Kitts and Nevis
• Judge: Thompson Jr. J
• Judgment Date: 28 June 2024
• Judgment citation (vLex): [2024] ECSC J0628-1
• Docket Number: CLAIM NO. NEVHCV2022/0129
• Court: High Court (Saint Kitts and Nevis)

Between:

Yasmine Tyson-Hanley

Claimant

and

Envoy Air Inc

Defendant

CLAIM NO. NEVHCV2022/0129

EASTERN CARIBBEAN SUPREME COURT

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

(CIVIL)

Appearances:

Mr. Brian Barnes and Ms. Leigh-Anne Wellington for the Claimant

Ms. Kurlyn Merchant and Ms. Aymah George for the Defendant

Thompson Jr. J

1 Envoy Inc (“Envoy”) is wholly owned subsidiary of the American Airlines Group. Envoy used to be known as American Eagle Airlines. American Airlines is the largest airline in the world and Envoy is the company through which American Airlines provides its services to the Federation of St Christopher and Nevis.

2 Yasmin Tyson Hanley (“the Claimant”) was first employed by Envoy's predecessor as a passenger service agent on July 1 ^st, 1999. By a letter dated May 15 ^th, 2019, and addressed to the Claimant's attorney at law, Envoy separated (to use their euphemism) the Claimant from their service.

3 The Claimant was aggrieved by her separation from Envoy and filed these proceedings on October 10, 2022, claiming damages (both aggravated and punitive) for her alleged wrongful dismissal from Envoy's service.

4 Envoy filed their defence to the Claimant's claim and on February 17, 2023, the Claimant filed an amended statement of claim seeking damages as particularized below. Firstly, the Claimant averred that she, her husband, her mother and her three children would have been entitled to unlimited travel on Envoy. According to her, assuming a life expectancy of 79 years, she and her relatives would have been entitled to a total of 2,352 trips on Envoy's aircraft. It was her case that assuming a value of US$1,200.00 per trip she and her relatives lost the benefit of a lifetime travel benefit in the amount of approximately EC$7,587,175.68.

5 The Claimant also pleaded that in addition to the sums claimed above for her direct family members, she would have been entitled to 4 tickets per annum for extended family and friends and that this loss of travel benefit amount to a further EC$462,370.40 thus totaling EC$8,049,546.08 in lost travel benefits.

6 The Claimant also sought EC$48,273.35 as her loss of earnings from the date of her separation from Envoy's service until the date of filing of her claim. She sought a long service gratuity of EC$14,175.20 and discounts in the sum of EC$38,632.71 (presumably for cruises, car rental and FedEx discounts). When these sums were added to her claim for special damages in the sum of EC$28,301.83 the Claimant was seeking the global sum of EC$8,178,928.52 together with her attorney's costs.

7 In their defence, Envoy disputed that the Claimant was wrongfully dismissed. They say that although the separation letter of May 15 ^th, 2019, referred to numerous documented instances of the Claimant's ill-discipline, poor behaviour and flouting of Envoy's policies and procedures during her tenure they were not relying on her poor record. In their view, they had simply lost confidence in the Claimant's ability to perform her job.

8 In support of her claim, the Claimant called herself as her only witness. Envoy called three witnesses in support of their case. They called a Mr. Jorge Ramirez, Envoy's Vice President for International Operations, Mr. Chris Pappaioanou, Envoy's Senior Vice President of Legal and Labour and Ms. Delrah Lestrade, Envoy's General Manager of its operations in St. Christopher and Nevis.

9 This court does not propose to recap the evidence of the witnesses but only such parts as are necessary to explain its decision in this matter. Neither side was of the view that this court could benefit from a factual chronology. All the same, at the close of the evidence of Ms. Delrah Lestrade, this court, in the exercise of its fact-finding role, was able to distill the following factual chronology from Ms. Lestrade.

Date	Event
December 8, 2018	Stand by passengers left behind incident
December 18, 2018	The Claimant was withheld from service because of the standby passengers left behind incident
January 9, 2019	The Claimant's final advisory letter with Envoy was prepared. That advisory letter suspended the Claimant's travel privileges for 6 months.
January 11, 2019	The Claimant's final advisory letter was served on her on her return to service.
February 27, 2019	The Claimant was withheld from service pending investigations into allegations of alleged travel fraud.
March 13, 2019	The Claimant attended an investigative interview with Ms. Lestrade and Jamie Hulme.
March 29th, 2019	The Claimant's attorney sent their 1 st demand letter to Envoy threatening proceedings in defamation, false suspension 1 and lost compensation.
April 9th, 2019	Envoy via Ms. Lestrade send a letter to the Claimant seeking her assistance in their investigation into the alleged travel fraud and indicating they were prepared to consider terminating her services.
April 12th, 2019	The Claimant's legal representatives respond with a 7-page letter seeking among other things, reinstatement to her employment with full benefits and seeking compensation and the removal from her file any allegations she deemed inappropriate.
May 15th, 2019	The letter from Kelsick Wilkin Ferdinand separating the Claimant from her service.

10 The chronology confirms that on January 9 ^th and April 9 ^th, 2019, the Claimant received two separate letters warning her in writing within 6 months of her termination that she had been guilty of misconduct and/or unsatisfactory performance. The letter of April 9, 2019, made it clear to the Claimant that her employment with Envoy would be terminated if her unsatisfactory performance persisted. The requirements of Section 5(1) (c) of the Protection of Employment Act were thus made out. There could therefore be no basis for finding that the Claimant was wrongfully dismissed.

11 A lot of heavy weather was made of the fact that the separation letter of May 15, 2019, set out 20 instances of the Claimant's poor disciplinary record. That letter is crystal clear. Paragraph 4 of the letter (the first page) states that ‘ the reason for the termination of your client's employment is that our client no longer has trust and confidence that she (the Claimant) can fulfill her role as a customer service agent’.

12 The Claimant's argument that Envoy, by listing the Claimant's history of poor behaviour in their termination letter had relied on that history in terminating her employment with them, is wholly misguided. The termination letter makes clear the rationale for the Claimant's termination. That sequencing makes it clear that (a) Envoy had lost confidence in the Claimant and (b) that Envoy was only referencing her poor work history as factual background as opposed to a consideration in the

basis for her termination. The Claimant's attempt to frame the argument in this way did not assist the Claimant's case

13 In any event, Envoy's separation letter of May 15, 2019, in the sum of EC$6,724.93 representing the Claimant's statutory notice period, together with her salary for the period of her suspension from duty and her holiday pay could not be disputed.

Court's Analysis

14 The Claimant fared extremely poorly in the witness box. She insisted on addressing counsel for Envoy by her first name. When she was confronted by the truth, she simply denied its existence. The Claimant was required to work from 12 to 4:30 pm but felt aggrieved that during her years of service Envoy did not include in her remuneration a sum for a taxi to catch the boat from St Kitts to Nevis or ferry fare. This comment ignored the fact that the Claimant was not obliged to work with Envoy.

15 In any event, the Claimant had wholly undermined the trust and the confidence so essential to the employer/employee relationship by her conduct. So that for example, the demonstrably false allegation to Envoy in 2019 about Ms. Lestrade's hiring of her sister-in-law would have sufficed for serious misconduct to warrant the Claimant's summary termination.

16 For example, it was part of her claim that she had been promoted to lead baggage agent with an accompanying increase in her salary. Envoy denied this. According to Envoy the Claimant was designated as a ‘baggage champion’ which carried no change in salary or responsibilities and was a HR strategy aimed at motivating and thus lifting the Claimant's performance. When asked to show proof of any documents supporting her argument for her changed job description or increase in pay to support her case the Claimant accepted that she had none but maintained that she had in fact been promoted and paid for this extra duty.

17 In another example, the Claimant accepted that she had written to the head of Envoy's HR department in March 2019 complaining that Ms. Lestrade had, in breach of Envoy's policies hired Ms. Lestrade's sister-in-law to work at Envoy. The Claimant accepted that she had no proof that the young lady in question was Ms. Lestrade's sister-in-law in fact but that did not deter her from putting forth that allegation in her email to HR. In answer to this court's question, the Claimant accepted that it was possible that the young lady was not Ms. Lestrade's sister-in-law in fact and may have only been in a casual relationship with Ms. Lestrade's brother. This concession was frankly surprising since the Claimant did not appear to realize that she had essentially sent an email based purely on conjecture maligning the head of Envoy's operations in St. Christopher. Quite how the Claimant expected to enjoy the trust and confidence of Envoy in those circumstances was difficult to understand.

18 On another occasion, the Claimant insisted that she had made an anonymous complaint to Envoy's ethics hotline in March 2019. According to the Claimant, that complaint was the first time that she had made the allegation to Envoy about Ms. Lestrade...