CDNIS refuses to comment and the labour cases have gone cold. Has CDNIS settled?
In 2015, no fewer than three CDNIS labour law cases were appearing regularly before Hong Kong’s Labour Tribunal. Presiding magistrates regularly held forth on the benefits of settling, in terms of monetary cost, time and focus on education versus litigation. The school, at various times in various cases, indicated it intended to prosecute cases fully, sometimes ‘on principle’ (see former stories). It appears the school’s resistance may have crumbled in at least one and maybe two cases.
Cases were occurring multiple times a month in the third and fourth quarter of last year, but there seem to be few in the docket of late.
When asked directly about the cases, the school spokesperson, Melanie Hnetka, declined to comment on cases ‘in front of the tribunal’. When asked if that meant the cases were still in front of the Tribunal, the response was “Again, the school does not consider it appropriate to comment on matters that are before the Tribunal.”
The interested parties, Nutting, Hughes and Lalwani, have not been available for comment.
Settled?
Mr Lalwani’s case has been held over until June when it will be decided if the case will stay at the level of the more affordable and lawyer-free Labour Tribunal level or, as the School is petitioning, be moved up to the more expensive High Court.
However, Harbour Times has it on good authority from multiple sources that at least one of the cases has been settled, making the refusal to comment on cases ‘in front of the Tribunal’ a mystery, if one of them isn’t.
Former Head of Lower School, Dylan Hughes, is currently the head of the Luanda International School in Angola and not readily available for comment.
Ms Nutting was also unavailable.
Presumably the School would like to share the good news that it was clearing its backlog of unsettled legal cases with its Board, at the very least. As this story went online, HT was still reaching out to Board members.
