Judge rules in favour of Christine Perriott

In the web of legal challenges in court involving Telemedia, this morning Justice John Muria handed down his ruling in the Christine Perriott case. The former Telemedia employee was let go by the company, re-instituted, and subsequently resigned her job. Telemedia was seeking an interim injunction to restrain Attorney Lois Young from further representing Christine Perriott in her severance pay claim. The basis of Telemedia’s argument was that since Young has confidential information regarding the substantive matter, representing Perriott would be a breach of client confidentiality.

In his decision, Justice Muria looked at two issues; firstly that an attorney has the duty not to disclose the confidential information from one client to another even after discharge of the attorney’s duties and as such Young could not to disclose confidential material. At the same time Justice Muria determined that B.T.L. had waived confidentiality since the information involving this case was in the public domain.

The trial Judge also ruled on whether or not the substantive claim exists, in this case the issue of severance pay. Senior Counsel Fred Lumor, representing Young, had argued before the court that on May twenty-ninth 2008 Perriott withdrew her claim making the sole basis for the injunction, nonexistent. Justice Muria agreed, thereby refusing Telemedia’s application for interim injunction. Christine Perriott gave us her views on the outcome of the case.

Christine Perriott,
“When they had the appeal and B.T.L. had won that appeal it was only prudent, I mean it would have been foolish to go against that. So that is why we drop the severance claim of that period for what we had claimed for and we wrote them. I instructed Miss Lois to do that and they have a copy of that letter but what B.T.L. did, I mean they foolishly put out the information themselves in Martha Molina’s affidavit. So its not like we went and we got it and Lois showed it to me. As a matter of fact I wasn’t even interested in it because it had no bearing on my substantive claim. So B.T.L. is the one, they put out they foolishly put out the information and then they going to use that to say that Lois is going to use these information in my case. The judge said that there’s no justification, no argument so it’s a great victory thank the lord.”