saintsRrising wrote:Personally I have no problems with the club making a "Golden Parachute" payment.
Most such payments come with strings....
It would seem that the New Board made an estimation as to what they deemed reasonable....but that GT believes it should be bigger.
My read is that this isn't Golden Parachute, the Golden Parachute was the extra payout on the minimum at the time of Thomas sacking. I also have no issue with this, it's the kind of thing companies do to ensure exiting executives don't carry bad blood... while 6 months may seem a lot of money to us, it's not unusual for executive contracts to have termination periods of that and longer, partially to set up such payments.
The issue of leave sounds like it comes down to administrative miscommunication. The Board would have likely had the power to demand Thomas take his leave, but unless they actioned it, if Thomas didn't action it either, payroll wouldn't deal with it, and Thomas would still have a certain period of time owing. May be Thomas taking a pound of flesh, may be that Thomas genuinely never had a holiday, the court will decide, and since it's a statutory entitlement, the "Golden Parachute" payment's covering of it would probably depend on the paperwork... but it's quite possible that since the numbers don't add up, they will be considered unrelated.
Like others, I'm far more interested in the "hush money" side of things, as from the $90k figure on the leave compared to the $120k offer of settlement, this seems to be the disagreement that would bring this to court over a difference of $70k (and possible award of interest), but with a significant degree of risk attached to Thomas financially if he loses this even should he win the remainder (again, possibly barring a decision on interest)... but the reports would seem to indicate that most of the contention was focused on the Leave side of things?
Did Thomas adequately demonstrate the existence of a "hush money" agreement?
Did the club contest this agreement?
Did the club offer evidence that Thomas had not abided by his side of the agreement?