Public doctors were already being compensated for overtime worked when they received a monthly HK$3,500 honorarium, a lawyer for the Hospital Authority said.
Adrian Huggins SC told the Court of Final Appeal yesterday that the honorarium scheme existed as it was impractical to recompense the doctors individually for the amount of overtime worked.
He also submitted that the doctors had no contractual right to be recompensed by time off in lieu.
Huggins was speaking on the second day of the final stage in a legal battle launched by 100 public doctors against the authority.
Denis Chang SC, for the doctors, had argued earlier in the day that the honorarium - paid to doctors in areas where a lot of overtime is worked - did not displace their primary right to time off in lieu.
Their arguments stem from rejection by the Court of Appeal last year of the doctors' claim for overtime payments in lieu of time off in compensation for overtime and on-call duties during rest days and holidays. The appeal court ruled that once the doctors had accepted the honorarium as payment for extra overtime, any entitlement to time off in lieu was extinguished. Huggins said that despite a change in language, the 1991 and 1994 versions of the authority's human resources policy manual contained the same provisions on time off in lieu.
