CAYHILL, Sint Maarten — In the court case from Vernon Richards which was handled last Wednesday, NIPA’s Attorney Reynold Groeneveld blamed the Director Vernon Richards for the fact that they were condemned to pay the former Financial Administrator Mr. R. Kerdijk a considerable amount as compensation in connection with outstanding salaries and the dissolution of his contract.
Apparently the Board prohibited Kerdijk from entering the NIPA premises after he allegedly refused to sign a new contract. Kerdijk, who coincidentally was also represented by Attorney at Law Cindy Marica – Henderson, filed an injunction in which he claimed his outstanding wages from February until July which were awarded by the Court in the decision of June 25th 2015.
Kerdijk’s Attorney argued that his contract was automatically renewed since January 1st 2015 and therefore NIPA could not be followed in their statements that Kerdijk didn’t have a contract because he refused to sign a new one and the previous was automatically expired. The judge considered the fact that Kerdijk worked until March 2015 before he was send away by Richards on instructions of the Board, which was already over 2 months into his automatic extension.
NIPA’s Attorney at Law Mr. Groeneveld also filed a conditional dissolution procedure, but this request was denied because there were no grounds to dissolve the agreement on their request given the circumstances. Kerdijk, whose Attorney filed a counterclaim in the dissolution procedure, didn’t feel like working for NIPA any longer and demanded the dissolution and a reasonable compensation based on the dismissal formula with Correction factor 2. The compensation was awarded by the Court as well as the outstanding wages until October 1st 2015. NIPA was also condemned to pay the legal fees and collection fees to Kerdijk.
