JP Morgan questions Employment Court jurisdiction over stoush with former NZ CEO

Thursday 16th April 2015

The Court of Appeal has heard that the Employment Court has no jurisdiction over a settlement agreement between JP Morgan Chase and its former New Zealand boss, in the latest iteration of a long running employment dispute.

Robert Lewis is seeking $170,000 in damages and lost income as well as a declaration his employment agreement with the international bank was breached. Lewis claims that having left JP Morgan Chase he applied for a job at Westpac in 2010 only to have his former employer deny he had been its local chief.

JP Morgan is in the Court of Appeal hearing before Justice Lynton Stevens, Justice Christine French and Justice Mark Cooper having failed last year to convince Employment Court Chief Justice Graeme Colgan to strike out Lewis's claim against the bank.

Lewis has been in dispute with the bank since September 2010, when he first raised personal grievances alleging he had been unjustifiably disadvantaged in his employment. In March 2010, shortly before Lewis left the bank the two reached a deal which JP Morgan says settled his claims against the bank, and outlined his exit from the bank. Lewis is arguing the agreement was an amendment to his employment contract.

In October 2012, the Employment Relations Authority rejected Lewis's complaint over JP Morgan breaching the agreement, and Lewis subsequently made a claim against the bank at the Employment Court. JP Morgan, represented by Rob Towner of Bell Gully, argued today that the 2010 agreement was not a variation to the employment contract and did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Employment Court.

Of particular importance to Lewis's argument is that the agreement, made the day prior to his termination date at the bank, included the clause that neither party would make "any disparaging comment" about the other. Appearing for Lewis, Michael O'Brien, of Kensington Swan Lawyers argued that because the agreement was signed prior to Lewis's termination date it was a variation to the employment agreement, and denying Lewis was chief executive to a possible future employer was effectively a disparaging comment.

Justice France countered that "subject to defamation laws an employee or employer are entitled to bag the other", although O'Brien argued that "bagging" was quite different to denying former employment.

Lewis became chief executive of the local arm of the bank in 2008, when the Reserve Bank of New Zealand required a chief executive of a bank be resident in the country.

O'Brien said the Employment Relations Authority would not entertain Lewis's claim because it had already considered the issue and had said a settlement agreement was not in its jurisdiction. The justices today said that if Lewis was relying on the settlement agreement, rather than the 2008 contract which documents him as chief executive, the authority may have had jurisdiction.

The hearing continues.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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