KINGSTON, Jamaica — Anthony Williams, a member of the legal team representing Member of Parliament Fitz Jackson in his court matter with Scotia Bank in Jamaica, is celebrating after the Court of Appeal gave a ruling in his client’s favour on Monday.

Williams told the Observer Online that the legal team led by King’s Counsel, Douglas Leys, submitted an application for leave to appeal a summary judgement which was previously granted in the Supreme Court to the Bank of Nova Scotia in the case involving Jackson.

“We filed to the Court of Appeal by way of an application seeking permission or leave to appeal and the court found that there were arguable grounds for appeal so the application for leave was granted. We are now going to file the application to argue the substantive appeal and that is where we are right now. It is a good success for Mr Jackson at this stage of the proceedings. The case is very, very live,” Williams told the Observer Online.

While highlighting the details of the case and how it came about, Williams explained that it all started when Jackson received a $2,500 cheque and went to the bank to cash it in 2024.

“He went to the Bank of Nova Scotia in Portmore to change a cheque and the bank insisted that they can only change a cheque if he pays a bank fee of $385. Mr Jackson refused on the basis that Section 3 of the Bills of Exchange Act makes it very clear that a cheque is an unconditional order in writing for a certain sum of money to be paid. The essence of the case is that when someone presents a cheque at a bank and the bank charges a fee to encash the cheque, we are contending that it is wrong because that is now making the cheque conditional,” he said.

Williams pointed out that this case involving Jackson will affect every individual in Jamaica “in terms of cheques and bank fees”.

“It is going to affect the banking industry and it is going to affect the Bank of Jamaica and almost every institution that deals with financial transactions covering cheques and bank fees. It is a big thing. So far we can say that since Mr Jackson’s case the bank has withdrawn all fees related to the encashment of cheques so there are no longer fees to encash cheques. They withdrew it in 2024. This matter stemmed from that time,” Williams said in his interview with Observer Online on Monday.

“Today we got permission for leave to appeal. That permission was previously refused. We sought and applied for an application for permission to appeal. We will now look to file the formal appeal. We could not file the formal appeal until we got the approval and permission which we got today,” he stated.

He said that on two occasions, the court denied Jackson’s leave to appeal.

Jackson’s legal team contend that there were errors made in terms of the previous handling of the case, according to Williams.

One of the errors he highlighted was the granting of a summary judgement to the bank.

“The bank did not apply for summary judgement. We contended and argued successfully that a non-applicant for summary judgement cannot obtain summary judgement and there were other points,” he said.