Mr C Ekins v Metric Solutions Ltd. — 2020

The claimant, Mr C Ekins, worked for Metric Solutions Ltd from 19 November 2018 as a Project Administrator and was made redundant on 17 April 2020. The dispute concerned whether a £4,000 commission payment was due on the Christopher Addison House project. The tribunal found that the claimant's 2018 written contract included a commission term, that it was not varied in 2019 to remove the entitlement, and that the January 2020 commission payment of about £4,200 for sales made in 2019 was inconsistent with the respondent's case that commission had ceased.

The tribunal accepted the claimant's evidence that, in a meeting in autumn 2019, Mr Cosgrove told him he would be paid £4,000 commission for Christopher Addison House. It found that the payment was not made conditional on the respondent's net profit, and that the March 2020 contract did not take effect as a variation because it was not accepted by the claimant. On that basis, the tribunal held that £4,000 remained owing when employment ended, so the respondent made an unlawful deduction from wages and was also in breach of contract.

The tribunal ordered the respondent to pay the gross sum of £4,000. It did not make any separate damages award for breach of contract because the same facts were already covered by the unlawful deduction claim and the claimant had not claimed additional loss.