HONG KONG―A Hong Kong court on Friday overturned a ruling that ordered Cathay Pacific to pay 18 pilots about US$8 million for unfairly dismissing and defaming them.
The city's Court of Appeal cut the amount of defamation damages for each pilot to HK$700,000 (US$ 90,000), down from a lower court's HK$3.3-million award last year.
The appeal court's ruling also overturned unfair dismissal claims for which the pilots were each awarded HK$150,000.
"We welcome the court's ruling that reduces the amount of damages payment to the pilots," Cathay said in a statement.
"We are reviewing the 78-page judgement with our legal counsel on other points of the ruling."
A spokesman for the former employees could not be reached.
It was unclear whether the group would fight the ruling at the Court of Final Appeal, Hong Kong's top adjudicator.
The group -- among 49 pilots sacked by Cathay after talks broke down with management over their work conditions in 2001 -- argued that they were dismissed after starting a campaign against certain employment rules.
The union members had been campaigning since the 1990s against what they alleged to be Cathay's practice of making pilots perform duties over and above their contractual obligations.
Pilots were often required to fly longer hours with shorter breaks between duties, they said.
But the appeal court ruled the group was properly dismissed and compensated with wages in lieu of notice to terminate their contracts.
The court also described the earlier defamation award as "excessive", despite the "serious allegations" made about the pilots by company executives.
When current Cathay chief executive Tony Tyler announced the pilots' dismissal in 2001, he suggested they were unprofessional, had poor employment records and did not care about the interests of the airline.
Cathay management had the right to form such a "private opinion" about the employees, the appeal court said Friday.
"But it is quite a different matter when Cathay made public statements implicating them as bad employees and troublemakers who caused disruption," the ruling said.
Last November, Judge Anselmo Reyes ruled on the bitter nine-year court battle, saying the "predominant reason for the plaintiffs' termination by Cathay was their perceived participation in union activities."
He ordered Cathay to pay all but one pilot HK$3.3 million, saying Tyler and then chief operating officer Philip Chen made defamatory and career-damaging statements about them.
The other pilot died in 2002.-------------------------------
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