United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	MR D GRINDALL (Solicitor)


 


JUDGE PETER CLARK: This is an appeal by the employer, AD Answers Ltd t/a Data Answers against a decision of a Chairman Mr B C Buckley, sitting alone at the Stratford Employment Tribunal on 23rd March 1998, upholding the respondent employee, Mrs Williams' claim of unlawful deductions from wages. She was awarded the total sum of £3,750.

The main factual issue between the parties was whether or not an oral agreement was reached between the respondent and Mr Clive Ashborn, the appellant's managing director, on 16th October 1996 that she would receive a bonus payment in the region of £5,000 if she stayed in the employment of the company until April 1997. That was the respondent's version of the conversation. She had at that time accepted an offer of employment elsewhere and after the meeting on 16th October, which dealt also with a reduction in her hours of work, she turned down the alternative job and stayed with the appellant. It was the appellant's evidence through Mr Ashborn that the bonus payment discussed on 16th October had been subject to conditions. His evidence was that the bonus was subject to the company achieving their target figures above budget figures, thereby creating what he described as a 'bonus pool'. That was the explanation which he gave the respondent for not paying her any bonus at a meeting held in late May 1997.

The Chairman preferred the respondent's evidence to that of Mr Ashborn. The two had worked together for some six years and neither believed that the other was not true to his or her word, but at the end of the day the Chairman had to decide which recollection of that meeting he preferred, and he preferred the respondent's. He went on to hold that the respondent had a reasonable expectation that she would receive a bonus of about £5,000 and that failure to pay any bonus amounted to an unlawful deduction from her wages. He awarded the sum of £3,500 after deduction of tax in respect of the bonus and a further £250 directors fee which the appellant conceded she was owed.

In this appeal Mr Grindall has we think sought to put a gloss on the fundamental finding of fact by the tribunal Chairman. He has referred to certain aspects of the evidence which are not rehearsed in the Chairman's extended reasons. However, Employment Tribunal decisions are not bound to set out each and every aspect of the evidence, rather to set out the main contentions and to express clearly the relevant findings of fact and the application of the law to those findings. In our view, that is what the Chairman has done in this case. At the end of the argument, Mr Grindall accepted that his principal point was that because on the Chairman's findings the bonus was expressed to be in the region of £5,000, that was too vague and uncertain to allow any enforceable claim.

We disagree. Having rejected Mr Ashborn's evidence that the payment of the bonus itself was dependent upon the company achieving certain target figures, the Chairman was really left in the position of an ordinary civil court deciding a breach of contract claim on the basis of quantum meruit. In the absence of compelling evidence from either side as to the precise basis on which the final bonus figure was to be calculated, in our judgment, he was perfectly entitled to take the figure of £5,000 less tax, as the amount of the unlawful deduction under s. 13 of the Employment Rights Act 1996.

In these circumstances we have concluded that this appeal raises no arguable point of law to go forward to a full appeal hearing, and consequently, it must be dismissed.