BOUYED by the ruling from the UK-based Privy Council that sums owing to staff from as far back as 2002 under a profit-sharing scheme must be paid, the NCB Staff Association is sending a fresh signal to the National Commercial Bank Jamaica Limited (NCBJ) that it intends to pursue “at least one” more case in which it believes profit-sharing was triggered, based on the formula used to make the calculations, but was never paid by the bank.

Paul Stewart, president of the NCB Staff Association, in an interview with the Jamaica Observer Friday about the recent victory said there are other cases of non-payment of profit-sharing which it intends to pursue.

“I am of the view that in recent years there was at least one year in which profit-sharing should have been paid, based on the formula used to trigger the payment, and it was not paid,” Stewart told Sunday Finance. He declined to say which year it was but said auditors are going over the numbers before making a final determination about how much is owing to the staff. He said after that the staff association will write the bank about the matter, hoping that it will be addressed without going to court, given the precedence of the recent losses NCB faced in the matter at the High Court, Court of Appeal, and the Privy Council. The Privy Council is Jamaica’s final appelate court and its decisions are final.

But turning to the matter of the recent ruling from the Privy Council, Stewart said he was heartened about the ruling handed down on Tuesday, adding that he was never in doubt about the outcome.

“I was fully confident from the outset that the formula had been triggered and the profit-sharing was payable, especially when we went to the High Court and got the ruling from Justice Sykes followed by the unanimous decision from the Court of Appeal. After that I was wondering where the bank was going thereafter. And when I went into the Privy Council and heard the argument made by both sides, when I came out I said to my other partners, ‘It’s over and it’s over in our favour.’”

Similar sentiments were also expressed by the attorneys involved in the case from Crafton Miller and Company, the entity that was hired by the NCB Staff Association to marshall the case through the courts.

Crafton Miller, who lends his name to the firm he heads, though not heavily involved these days, given his 94 years, was first to respond.

“Well, I get accustomed to these types of judgements, enuh, to be very frank,” Miller said with a smidgen of arrogance as he used his fingers, accompanied by sound, to mimic an aeroplane climbing rapidly. “I am in the clouds about this case.” Otherwise, he spoke very little, understandable, given his advanced years.

But Patricia Roberts-Brown, an attorney who formerly worked at Crafton Miller and Company and worked on the case for more than a decade but lectures business students about law these days at the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech), said the outcome was “expected”.

“Based on what we have done from the beginning and how the case was argued, the judgment written by Justice Sykes was a well–written judgment. The Court of Appeal affirmed his judgment and going with the same situation, nothing had change, we were expecting this victory,” she added.

“Justice has been served, the staff association’s victory has been long in coming, but it has been sure in coming. It’s unfortunate that the bank allowed it to be dragged out like this, but justice has been served.”

Jonathan Neita, an attorney at Crafton Miller and Company, said he “felt relief” because of the ground work that was done before. They said when the judgment came on Tuesday, all were happy in the office, a law firm which employs five people, which took on a behemoth and won.

“The evidence was pretty straightforward in our opinion, meaning that the calculation’s that we saw that the profit share had been triggered based on the formula that was applied. Some of the arguments made by NCB didn’t carry weight,” Neita added.

Miller’s own daughter, an attorney also at Crafton Miller and Company but was not intimately involved with the preparation of the case, expressed relief for all who contributed, calling the judgment “the end of a race”.

So what’s next following the ruling?

“Where the matter is currently, we are still waiting on the formal order from the Privy Council, and once we get that, it will lay out the procedure to follow from there, but we are in discussions with the clients who are pleased with the results,” Neita said. He added that the formal order is expected in six to eight weeks.

However, for the staff association, the wait should not take so long before the bank starts meeting with it to go through how payments will be made and when they will start.

Stewart said he was hoping the bank would have called him by now, as the head of the staff association, in light of the judgment, but up to the time of the interview for this article on Friday he said no call had come in to him as yet.

“If we don’t hear from them, we will be reaching out to them through our attorneys, because we want to have some certainty about when the payments will start within the next 14 to 21 days. I think they are shocked and realised they have made an error, but that’s how they behave,” he said. He questions the advice that was given to management to pursue a case he believes was clear-cut.

Still, while no contact has been made with the staff association, the bank on Tuesday sent out a circular to staff saying the “Judicial Committee of the Privy Council…delivered an opinion dismissing the bank’s appeal”. The staff association took umbridge with the wording, especially the use of the word “opinion” stating to its members in a circular of its own that the ruling “is not an opinion but a judgment. This is final.”

The case initially involved $142 million in profit-sharing but with interest the cost has now ballooned to approximately $800 million. That is separate from attorneys cost which NCB must pay given it lost the case.

Stewart said the next step now is to start contacting those who worked at NCB between October 1, 2001 and September 30, 2002 to make arrangements for payment.

“Everybody who was at NCB during that time will be paid. If that person died intestate then we would have to deal with that through the administrator general, and if they died leaving a will, most likely we would ask the beneficiaries to provide documentation to get the payments,” Stewart added.

The payment covers about 2,000 employees. Those who were working during the period of the profit-sharing and left in good standing will be entitled to the payment.