The Tongan Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a claim of wrongful dismissal brought by a former sales supervisor of Leiola Group Ltd in Vava’u amid an investigation by the company into a “significant amount of missing stock”.
The supervisor, Semisi Vaitaki, was suspended in June 2014 while an investigation was undertaken and before his employment was advised to be terminated on June 29.
However the Leiola company argued “Vaitaki was initially suspended from his employment while investigations were made into stock variances and that on around 22 July 2014 he voluntarily resigned from his employment”.
The judge, Lord Chief Justice Owen Paulsen, said: “Mr. Vaitaki has failed to prove that he was dismissed from his employment with Leiola and his claim must fail”.
The court was told the Manager of Human Resources and Corporate Services, Viliami Takau, and Mr Jagjeet Chand, the Chief Operations Officer of Leiola, “discovered about TP$5,500 value of stock missing from company’s office in Vava’u”.
Mr. Vaitaki was suspended from his duties on June 20, 2014 while an investigation was undertaken.
Mr Paulsen said: “ it is clear to me that he was told of the reason for his suspension. He was also told of the approximate value of the missing stock. He did not challenge his suspension”.
The investigation took about three months and although it appeared to be longer that normally expected of such an investigation the court was told Vaitaki had travelled overseas during that period.
On July 18 Takau emailed Mr. Vaitaki and told him that the amounts he owed Leiola were $4,122 for stock and $1,298 for sundries.
Takau advised Vaitaki about the details of the amounts and said: “I’ll write to you on the weekend to let you know the decision regarding your employment”.
However no decision was ever communicated to Mr. Vaitaki about his employment before he emailed Mr. Takau on July 22, 2014 and advised that he was travelling to the United States, the judgement said.
Vaitaki disputed the amount of the stock variances, but he appeared to accept the amount owing for sundries and said that they would sort the matter out when he returned from his travels, Mr Paulsen said.
Mr. Vaitaki confirmed that he was not told by Mr. Takau that his employment was terminated and he did not advise Mr. Takau or anyone else at Leiola when he would be returning from the United States.
When he returned Vataki did not contact Mr. Takau or Leiola.
“He said that he opened his mail and saw that there was no contact from the company and he just stayed at home”.
“There was no evidence either of any contact by Mr. Vaitaki’s lawyer with Leiola”, Mr Paulsen said.
“It appears that the first Leiola knew of either Mr. Vaitaki’s return from overseas or his claim to have been wrongfully dismissed was when it was served with these Court proceedings in around June or July 2015
Mr. Vaitaki has failed to prove that he was wrongfully dismissed from his employment and Mr Paulsen dismissed his claim.
Vaitaki was represented in court by Legal Counsel ‘Ofa Pouono and Dana E. Stephenson was acted for the Leiola Company.
