Benjamin Mendy awarded most of £11m unpaid wages at Man City

Former Manchester City defender Benjamin Mendy has been awarded £11 million by the court, plus the majority of his unpaid wages, after he was suspended by the Football Association (FA) while facing criminal charges.

At a two-day video hearing held at the Manchester employment tribunal last month, statements were heard from the French football player and his former club, both represented by KC lawyers.

In her judgment this week, Labor Judge Joanne Dunlop said: “I doubt that so much legal expertise and effort has ever before been devoted to prosecuting and defending a wage claim made by a single claimant.

“But I am also quite sure that no other claimant has alleged that an amount in the region of £11 million was deducted from his wages.”

Mendy, who became the world’s most expensive defender when he signed for Manchester City in 2017, appealed the Premier League’s decision not to pay his £6m wages for nearly two years after he was accused of rape and attempted rape.

In August 2021, Mendy was taken into custody following allegations of serious sexual offences. At the end of September, Man City informed him that they would stop paying him his wages. This continued until his contract expired at the end of June 2023, when he transferred to French club FC Lorient.

The court claim included two periods during which Mendy was detained in custody, from September 1, 2021, to January 7, 2022, and again from December 30, 2022, to January 17, 2023. Outside of these periods, he was prevented from fulfilling his contractual obligations, including education and training. He is playing due to an FA suspension and bail conditions.

Mendy was 23 when he joined Manchester City. The court outlined that the applicant had developed a taste for “partying”, a euphemistic term that included frequent casual sexual encounters, often with women he had just met.

Throughout 2020, Mendy held numerous parties in contravention of the Covid quarantine measures in place at the time.

He was first arrested in November 2020 after a woman accused him of raping her a few weeks earlier. He was released under investigation, but was arrested again in January 2021 after a second woman reported him to the police, accusing him of sexually assaulting her at a party at his home.

The 30-year-old actor was eventually cleared of all charges.

binary choice

The court heard from Mendy’s lawyer, Nick de Marco KC, that there was no express clause in his contract allowing for a cut or reduction in his salary. His contract presented Man City with a dual option: to follow the dismissal procedure, which, if it resulted in dismissal, would ensure that Mendy would have the freedom to sign a contract with another club; or keep it under contract and continue paying.

He said there was no legitimate mechanism to keep him under contract while refusing to pay him.

Man City’s Sean Jones KC suggested there could be an implied term allowing the employer to stop paying wages “in such circumstances”.

The FA stated that the suspension, Mendy’s detention and bail conditions during the relevant periods constituted a complete obstacle to Mendy fulfilling his contract.

The judge said both sides presented arguments about whether Mendy deserved to be paid his wages.

Mendy’s position is that he is an innocent man whose career has been ruined, whose life has been ruined by false sexual allegations, and that the club have effectively abandoned him in his time of need.

Man City’s view is that Mendy has largely brought his problems upon himself and ignored sensible advice and “warning after warning” in his pursuit of a self-destructive party lifestyle. “Both of these narratives have validity, and there is no single cause for the chain of events that emerged in this case,” the decision said.

The judge said: “The only question for me is whether Manchester City are legally entitled to withhold that salary.”

Ready and willing

The judge found that Mendy was “ready and willing” to work during periods of non-custody and was prevented from doing so by impediments that were unavoidable or involuntary by him (the FA suspension and bail conditions).

“Under these circumstances,” the judge said, “he was entitled to payment in the absence of any authority in the contract for the employer to deduct the salary.”

In contrast, his failure to fulfill the contract while in custody was partly due to his own culpable actions in breach of his bail conditions. Under the circumstances, the judge found that Manchester City had the right to deduct his salary.

In a statement, Mendy thanked his lawyers and said: “I am very pleased with this decision, as I have had to wait three years to receive my wages, and I sincerely hope that the club will now act honorably and pay the outstanding amounts. I will pay the other amounts promised to me under the contract without further delay, so “I can finally leave this difficult part of my life behind.”

judgment This means Mendy will be entitled to receive outstanding wages for around 17 of the 22 months he has claimed, amounting to around £8.5 million. The judge wrote to both parties to ensure that they act in a timely manner to reach an agreement on the amount owed.