Petroleum company files notice of appeal and stay of execution after two days of the High Court judgment, swearing it cannot recover the D2.2 million if paid out before the appeal is decided, nine grounds challenge the judge’s findings on contract, fairness, damages, evidence, and the medical dimension of the case.
ORYX Energies (Gambia) Limited has moved to challenge and file a stay of the High Court judgment that ordered it to pay its former Information Technology Manager more than two million dalasi in compensation for unlawful dismissal, filing a notice of appeal and a stay of execution application just days after the judgment was delivered.
The notice of appeal, dated 3rd June 2026, was filed at the Court of Appeal of The Gambia under Civil Appeal No. GCA-057/2026. It raises nine grounds on which the company says Justice Jaiteh was wrong. The stay of execution application, dated 4th June 2026, was filed at the High Court and asks that Momodou Jallow be prevented from collecting the award while the appeal is ongoing.
Both applications were filed by the company’s legal representative, Counsel Ida D. Drammeh
The notice of appeal challenges the whole of the judgment of Justice Jaiteh, not just parts of it. The company is asking the Court of Appeal to allow the appeal in full and set aside the entire decision of Justice Jaiteh delivered on 2nd June 2026.
The company’s Operations Manager swore under oath that if more than D2.2 million is paid out to Momodou Jallow before the appeal is decided, the company would be unable to recover it if the appeal later succeeds, making the entire appeal process pointless.
A stay of execution is a court order that temporarily prevents a judgment winner from enforcing what the court has awarded them. It does not cancel the judgment; it simply puts it on hold while an appeal proceeds. Without a stay, Momodou Jallow would be free to take enforcement steps against the company immediately, such as seeking to recover the D2,205,352.72 the High Court awarded him.
The company’s stay application is supported by an affidavit from Dodou Njai, its Operations Manager, who also testified as the company’s witness at the original trial. Dodou Njai swore the affidavit on 4th June 2026 before a Commissioner for Oaths in Banjul, setting out the grounds on which he says the stay should be granted.
Dodou Njai told the court he had been advised by counsel Ida D. Drammeh and believed it to be true that the notice of appeal raises substantial and triable issues of law and facts that deserve to be heard by the Court of Appeal, and that the appeal has a great chance of success.
On the financial risk, Dodou Njai stated that the total sum ordered by the High Court amounts to over GMD 2,202,360, and that if that money is paid out to Momodou Jallow before the appeal is decided, the company would be unable to recover it from him if the appeal ultimately succeeds. That, in legal terms, would make the appeal entirely pointless, what lawyers call rendering the appeal nugatory.
To address any concern about the company’s ability to pay if the appeal fails, Dodou Njai also stated that ORYX Energies (Gambia) Limited is a well-established, registered, and licensed company operating in the wholesale and retail petroleum sector in the country, with branches and sufficient means to pay Momodou Jallow in full if the court eventually rules against it.
Dodou Njai also disclosed that the company had already paid Jallow D229,144.00 as terminal benefits on 16th August 2022, the same day as his dismissal. He described that as representing three months’ salary in lieu of notice and outstanding leave, and stated that the sum was already in excess of what the contract required. The company says the High Court failed to properly account for the payment when calculating the award.
The notice of appeal delivered and identifies nine errors that the company says Justice Jaiteh made, covering the contract, the damages, the disciplinary process, the evidence, and the role of Momodou Jallow’s medical condition in the case.
The company’s first ground is that Justice Jaiteh effectively rewrote the employment contract by inserting terms that the parties had never agreed to. The company says the contract was clear: either side could end the employment by giving one month’s notice or paying one month’s salary in its place, adding that Justice Jaiteh was bound by those terms.
The company further stated that Justice Jaiteh had no basis to go beyond to award Momodou Jallow 24 months’ salary amounting to D1,952,352.72 when the contract provided for only one month. By doing so, the company argues, Justice Jaiteh substituted his own view of what the contract should have said for what it actually said.
The second ground challenges the amount of the awards. Even if some compensation was justified, the company says the amounts were so high as to be unreasonable. It argued that Justice Jaiteh ignored two important facts that should have reduced any award: first, the company had already paid Momodou Jallow D229,114.00 at termination, covering notice pay and outstanding leave, and no credit was given for that; second, Momodou Jallow had secured alternative employment after leaving the company, which should have been factored into the damages calculation but was not.
The third ground was the company’s internal policies and the reasons behind the recall of equipment and the suspension of Momodou Jallow’s system access. They argued that Justice Jaiteh treated the removal of Momodou Jallow’s email account and network credentials before the disciplinary hearing concluded as evidence that the company had already decided to dismiss him.
The company says the finding was wrong. It points to its Group Data Policy and internal staff conduct rules, which it says justified those steps. It argues that the equipment recalled was operationally needed, that some items were not taken back until after the disciplinary hearing, and that Momodou Jallow, being on leave and away from the office, had no legitimate reason to access the company’s IT systems at that time.
The company also states in the ground that neither party was contractually required to give a reason before termination.
The fourth ground takes direct aim at Justice Jaiteh’s finding that the dismissal process was prejudged, was conducted in a humiliating manner, and fell below the minimum standards of natural justice. The company says the judge applied the wrong standard. The proper yardstick, it argues, is the disciplinary procedure set out in the Labour Act, which the court simply ignored.
It also points out that Momodou Jallow himself never pleaded or alleged that the process was humiliating, yet Justice Jaiteh made that finding on his own. The company further argues that the standards of fairness and natural justice Justice Jaiteh drew upon were not derived from the Labour Act and had no proper place in an employment case governed by statute.
The company argues that Justice Jaiteh built a stronger case for Momodou Jallow than Momodou Jallow’s own lawyers had made at trial, going beyond what either side argued and filling in gaps that the evidence did not support.
The fifth ground, the company argued that Justice Jaiteh did not evaluate the company’s evidence fairly and objectively. Instead of assessing what was actually placed before him, the company says Justice Jaiteh constructed a case for Momodou Jallow that was more favourable to him than the one his own lawyers had presented at trial.
On the medical dimension, the company says Justice Jaiteh effectively penalised it for not treating Momodou Jallow’s sickle cell condition as a justification for failing to meet the requirements of an employment contract when, it says, the contract was simply one of employment. It argues there was no proper basis for requiring an independent medical inquiry into Momodou Jallow’s condition, and that Justice Jaiteh ignored the applicable legal rules on illness-related absence.
The sixth ground is the ORXY position that Justice Jaiteh awarded Momodou Jallow more than he had actually asked for. Momodou Jallow’s lawyers had claimed D153,000 in legal and administrative expenses. The court awarded that sum. But it then also awarded D100,000 in costs, which Jallow had never applied for. The company says a court has no authority to give a party more relief than that party has claimed.
The seventh ground argues that Justice Jaiteh applied legal principles that had no proper basis either in the Labour Act or in the facts of the case. In particular, the company objects to Justice Jaiteh’s use of Momodou Jallow’s sickle cell condition and what Justice Jaiteh described as his medical vulnerability as factors in assessing whether the company had acted fairly.
It also argues that Section 33(3) of the Constitution, the anti-discrimination provision, was never pleaded by either party and was never properly before the court, yet Justice Jaiteh invoked it in support of his reasoning.
The eighth ground focuses on what the company describes as a contradiction at the heart of the judgment. They argued that Justice Jaiteh expressly declined to make a formal finding that Momodou Jallow was discriminated against because of his medical condition. Yet in the same judgment, he held that the condition formed a significant part of the events leading to the termination and used that conclusion against the company.
The company says Justice Jaiteh cannot have it both ways. It argues the Labour Act itself sets a maximum on the number of sick days an employee is entitled to take, and that Momodou Jallow had no right to be treated differently from any other employee simply because his illness prevented him from performing his contractual duties.
The ninth and final ground is a general one: that even setting aside all the errors in the preceding eight grounds, the judgment as a whole is wrong and goes against the weight of the evidence that was before the court at trial.
Background of what Justice Jaiteh decided
Momodou Jallow joined Atlas Energy Limited as IT Manager in September 2015 and continued in the same role when ORYX Energy took over the company’s operations in 2021. He was dismissed on the 16th August 2022 after the company issued a termination letter citing the contractual notice clause and paid him terminal benefits on the same day.
Momodou Jallow challenged the dismissal in court, arguing it was not a genuine contractual termination but a disciplinary removal driven by his sickle cell condition and his medically certified absences.
The company denied that, maintaining it had simply exercised a lawful contractual right. It pointed to Section 55 of the Labour Act, 2007, which preserves the right of either party to terminate an employment contract in accordance with its terms, and argued that once it made the contractual payment the matter was legally concluded.
Justice Jaiteh rejected that argument. He held that Section 55 cannot override Sections 83 and 84 of the same Act, which require every employer to have a valid reason for dismissal and to follow a fair process regardless of what a contract says.
He found that the company had failed on both counts. He further found that the pre-hearing removal of Jallow’s access to company systems, email, and equipment showed that the decision to dismiss him had already been made before the disciplinary hearing had properly concluded violating the basic principle from the House of Lords decision in Ridge v Baldwin (1964) that a person must be given a genuine opportunity to be heard before a decision affecting their livelihood is taken.
Justice Jaiteh also found that the company’s years-long tolerance of the same misconduct it later relied upon to justify dismissal, and Momodou Jallow’s consistently high performance ratings above 90%, fatally undermined the company’s case on the merits.
The court awarded 24 months’ compensation of D1,952,352.72, D153,000 in proved legal expenses, D100,000 in costs, and post-judgment interest at 4% per annum. It also ordered the company to remit all outstanding social security and provident fund contributions in Momodou Jallow’s name.
What happens next?
The stay of execution application must first be argued before the High Court, where both sides will address whether the judgment should be suspended while the appeal proceeds. The court will weigh whether the appeal raises arguable grounds, whether the company faces serious harm if enforcement proceeds immediately, and whether Jallow would be adequately protected if the stay is later lifted.
If the stay is granted, Jallow cannot enforce the award until the appeal is decided. If it is refused, enforcement can proceed even while the appeal continues.
The substantive appeal will then be heard at the Court of Appeal under Civil Appeal. Momodou Jallow’s lawyer will file a respondent’s brief setting out why each of the nine grounds should be rejected and why the High Court judgment should be upheld.
The Court of Appeal will not hold a fresh trial it will examine the record of the High Court proceedings and decide whether Justice Jaiteh made any of the legal or factual errors the company has identified.
The case now puts before the Court of Appeal is a question for employment law in county: whether an employer can use a one-month contractual termination clause to defeat the Labour Act’s requirements of valid reason and fair process and whether the D2,205,352.72 award that the High Court made will ultimately stand.
