JADCO ready for court battle with Brown

Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission (JADCO) chairman Alexander Williams says the agency is fully prepared and ready to go to court regarding its decision to terminate the services of its executive director, Carey Brown. This is after Brown and his legal team were granted an injunction by the Supreme Court which bars JADCO from terminating his contract with notice of his final day being on October 31.

"I can confirm that Mr Brown has secured for himself an interim injunction," Williams told The Gleaner yesterday. "In other words, it's granted by the court without hearing the other party to the dispute and it will expire on November 1, and on that day, there will be a full hearing into the issue.

"JADCO is well prepared to go to court on November 1. We have representing us Ms Althea Jarrett of the attorney general's chambers."

Brown was asked to resign from his position by JADCO last month because its board had "lost confidence" in Brown's ability to effectively carry out his role as executive director. However, he did not cooperate with the request and was then fired from his role by the board on September 11. Regarding this decision, Williams went further to explain the move.

Dissatisfied with assurances

"We have become increasingly dissatisfied with the assurances that he has been giving the board concerning his monitoring of the sample-collection process. Two decisions, especially with Riker Hylton and Kaliese Spencer, in which the IADP (Independent Anti-Doping Panel) made adverse comments about the way JADCO commenced in breach of particular rules [was one]," Williams told The Gleaner on September 11.

However, Brown's lawyer, Hugh Wildman, said that the injunction was granted because he was temporarily reassigned from his original employment to that of executive director at JADCO, therefore, its board cannot make the decision it did to terminate him.

"Mr Brown is not an ordinary employee of JADCO," Wildman shared. "Mr Brown is a public officer. He was appointed under Section 125 of the Constitution to the Public Service, then he was seconded to the post as the executive director of JADCO.

"If you look at Section 10.6 of the JADCO Act, it also speaks to that secondment. Anyone who is appointed from the public service to that post, or any post in JADCO remains a public servant and is entitled to be treated as a public servant. Therefore, Mr Brown cannot be terminated at the pleasure of the board ... because he is protected by the constitution his employment is not one of private law, but public law.

The injunction was first granted by the Supreme Court on October 4 but Wildman said that it was continued on Tuesday by another judge. This was after an application for leave to pursue judicial review was filed, but could not be heard until November 1.