Case 2406446/2019 · Employment Tribunal
Miss J Wright v Broadstock Office Furniture Limited — 2019
- Case reference
- 2406446/2019
- Decision date
- 2 December 2019
- Jurisdiction
- England & Wales
- Judge
- Employment Judge McDonald
- Venue
- Manchester
Parties
2 namedClaimant
Miss J Wright
Respondent
Key findings
Tribunal's reasoningMiss J Wright was employed by Broadstock Office Furniture Limited as a Business Development Manager from 8 January 2018. The parties accepted that the respondent operated a contractual bonus scheme for the 2018-2019 bonus year, with a yearly sales target of £750,000 broken into quarterly targets of £187,500. The claimant resigned on 22 February 2019 and her employment ended on 15 March 2019, before the end of quarter 3. She had not met the targets in quarters 1 and 2, but the tribunal accepted that her quarter 3 invoiced sales exceeded the quarterly figure, whichever of the quarter 3 figures in the documents was used.
The central issue was how the bonus scheme worked. After hearing the claimant and Mr Stoney, and considering the October 2017 emails and the bonus matrix, the tribunal preferred the respondent’s evidence that the scheme was annualised and payable quarterly only if the claimant was on track against the annual target at the end of the relevant quarter. The tribunal found that, to trigger a quarter 3 bonus, the claimant had to have cumulative year-to-date sales of £562,500 by the end of quarter 3. Even on the claimant’s best case figure, her cumulative sales were below that threshold, so she had not earned any bonus under the scheme.
The tribunal also found that the scheme did not contain terms forfeiting bonus if an employee gave notice or if employment ended before the bonus pay date. It further found that there was no contractual residual discretion requiring the respondent to make payments outside the scheme, and that Horkulak did not assist because there was no express discretionary bonus clause to which an implied duty of rationality and good faith could attach. In the alternative, the tribunal held that the respondent’s refusal to pay was not irrational. The complaints of unlawful deductions from wages and breach of contract therefore failed in full. If the claimant had succeeded, the parties had agreed the amount would have been £2,500 per quarter.
Claims and outcomes
2 findings recorded| Claim type | Issue or finding | Outcome | Protected characteristic | Award |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unlawful deduction from wages | The tribunal accepted there was a contractual bonus scheme, but found the claimant had not met the scheme terms because the scheme required the year-to-date annual target to be reached at the end of the quarter. On that basis there was no legal entitlement to a bonus, so no unlawful deduction from wages arose. | Dismissed | — | — |
| Breach of contract | The alleged contractual breach depended on the same asserted entitlement to bonus pay. The tribunal found the claimant had not satisfied the scheme conditions for any quarter in issue, so the breach of contract complaint failed. | Dismissed | — | — |
Legal tests applied
9 references- s.13(1) ERA 1996
- s.27(1) ERA 1996
- s.13(3) ERA 1996
- RTS Flexible Systems Ltd v Molkerei Alois Müller GmbH [2010] UKSC 14
- Blue v Ashley [2017] EWHC 1928
- Ali v Petroleum Co of Trinidad and Tobago 2017 ICR 531
- Horkulak v Cantor Fitzgerald International 2005 ICR 402
- Chequepoint (UK) Limited v Hussein Radwan [2000] 9 WLUK 164
- Shirlaw v Southern Foundries (1926) Ltd / officious bystander test
Official outcome judgment PDF
Gov.uk primary recordThe official judgment PDF on gov.uk contains the tribunal's outcome, reasoning, and any remedy details. Where this page does not yet show extracted outcomes for every claim, use the PDF as the authoritative source.
Published on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
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