Firing its chief financial officer after 22 years of employment has cost Tobacco Associates Ltd. $300,000.

The company has been ordered by the Supreme Court to pay the money as severance and other reimbursements to former chief financial officer Dennis A.

Chin.

Mr. Chin won a summary judgment for the sum which he claimed the company owed him under a severance agreement.

According to the written judgment of October 29 by Puisne Judge Norma Wade-Miller, Mr. Chin had been with the company for 22 years until February 17 of this year. On that day Tobacco Associates president Edgar Wilkinson told Mr. Chin that unless he resigned he would be fired.

The next day Mr. Wilkinson agreed to pay him $196,082 (equal to two years salary), $75,000 as a management fee for services ending November 30, 1996, and $30,166 for 16 weeks of accumulated vacation pay.

Mr. Wilkinson initialled a note which recorded the agreement and gave instructions to the company's lawyers to draw up a first draft of the agreement. But according to evidence before the court the draft did not reflect the agreement.

After being contacted by Mr. Chin's lawyers, Tobacco Associates' lawyers wrote back stating they were taking instructions from their client.

On May 19 Tobacco Associates claimed the severance agreement was no longer in effect because Mr. Chin had allegedly misrepresented himself as a certified public accountant. The company also claimed he had been delegating the task of keeping the company's books to another employee who was not skilled enough, and that the financial records were in a "deplorable state''.

There was also an assertion by Tobacco Associates that Mr. Chin had failed to "prevent or detect the embezzlement'' from Tobacco Associates by an employee of the company.

Tobacco Associates also claimed Mr. Chin "frequently absented himself from his duties under his employment contract to carry on a secret liaison''.

In his defence before the court Mr. Wilkinson swore an affidavit alleging that in 1976 Mr. Chin had said during an interview he was a certified public accountant. Mr. Chin was hired according to Mr. Wilkinson on a "false and fraudulent'' representation.

Mr. Chin's lawyer Narinder Hargun argued there was no evidence that he had made any claim to be a certified public accountant, or that he had not performed his job.

In deciding in Mr. Chin's favour, Mrs. Justice Wade-Miller said Mr.

Wilkinson's assertion that he was induced to enter into the severance agreement was not credible.

Another factor weighing against Tobacco Associates was the payment of fourteen separate weekly instalments after the company sent a letter outlining its allegations against Mr. Chin.

"Once the defendants discovered the misrepresentation, they had the right to set the transaction aside,'' Mrs. Wade-Miller stated. "On the evidence before the court the defendants in my judgment, having discovered the misrepresentation on May 19, 1998 conducted themselves in such a manner that the conclusion could only be that they have affirmed the agreement.'' At the end of October, two days after the judgment was given, wholesaler Pitt & Co. Ltd. took over the cigarette business of Tobacco Associates to become the monopoly provider of such products on the Island.

Edgar Wilkinson Dennis Chin