A former security officer’s claim of unfair dismissal by De La Rue Currency and Security Print Ltd has earned him €90,374 in damages after a ten-year court saga.

Publius Davison had been dismissed from his job after years of employment, over a minor incident at the workplace back in 2008.

It was alleged that he had taken a broken plug to his workplace for repair. He had slipped a tube of adhesive into the front pocket of his shirt  meaning to repair the broken plug but was stopped by a company official who alleged that the tube had been stolen.

This relatively minor incident had sparked off proceedings against Mr Davison who was ultimately fired.

He had filed a case for unjustified dismissal before the Industrial Tribunal.  

The dismissal was first confirmed by the tribunal which upheld De La Rue’s decision, prompting an appeal which reversed that decision and sent the case back before the tribunal to determine compensation owed to the applicant.

That compensation was set at €18,000 in a decision delivered in 2016. Yet, the dismissed worker once again appealed the decision, with the Court of Appeal upholding the appeal and sending back the case to the tribunal in April.

Besides noting that the dismissal had been disproportionate to the incident attributed to the worker, the court declared that damages liquidated by the Tribunal were ‘real’ rather than ‘equivalent’ damages.

The quantification of those damages was to take into account the loss of wages, the difference between the applicant’s former wage and that earned at his new job as well as the fact that he had been denied a termination benefit of some €16,000

It was observed that Mr Davison had, after his dismissal, taken up a new job which, however, earned him less than half his former wages.

In the light of all this, the court concluded that the applicant “had a right to claim losses suffered,” sending back the case to the Tribunal which quantified those losses as amounting to €90,374.43 which the company was to settle within one month.

Lawyer Robert Abela was counsel to the applicant.