Fantastic news?

THE EDITOR, Sir:

ALL OF us at LIME and, I dare say, many thousands of Jamaicans, were truly baffled by Digicel Jamaica's CEO, Mark Linehan, when he described last Thursday's (February 11) judgment of the Supreme Court which went squarely in LIME's favour as 'fantastic news'.

Since Mr Linehan's effusive and very misleading remarks induced at least one local newspaper to carry an article on the matter with the rather confusing headline that both LIME and Digicel were 'claiming victory' based on the court ruling, we think a closer look at the judgment itself is in order.

For those unfamiliar with the matter, LIME took legal action against Digicel because Digicel had blocked LIME's international call circuits in December 2008 and January 2009, in direct contra-vention of the contract between Digicel and LIME.

In the judgment that Mr Linehan described as 'fantastic news', the court ruled that Digicel was now to "be restrained from disrupting, reducing, decommissioning, terminating or otherwise interfering with" the interconnectivity capacity provided for under the current interconnection agreement between Digicel and LIME.

The 'fantastic' judgment also goes on to state that Digicel should "restore (LIME's) interconnectivity capacity to 100 per cent "particularly on the circuits that Digicel had disrupted" - until the matter goes to trial.

Clear winner, loser

And, finally, the court ordered Digicel to pay LIME's costs and has also declared if "Digicel fails to comply with the terms of this order, it will be in contempt of court" and "the officer of the company may be liable to be imprisoned and the company may have its assets confiscated".

While I make no claim to legal expertise, I think the judgment shows that the case had a clear winner and a very obvious loser.

I am, etc.,

Errol K. Miller

Regional Vice-president

Corporate Communications