Company director awarded €25,000 after former boss incorrectly claimed she ‘misappropriated’ funds

A former telecoms company director who said her reputation was “tarnished” by her former boss’s unsubstantiated claim that she had “misappropriated” funds from a company account has been awarded €25,000 for unfair dismissal.

Barbara Coyle’s complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against The Blackdog Communications Ltd, which was upheld by the Workplace Relations Commission in a decision published on Tuesday was one of a series of cases a WRC official noted were “marked by palpable interpersonal acrimony amongst the parties” with “greatly disputed” facts.

The tribunal heard Ms Coyle was one of several colleagues who in 2010 had bought out Peter Wilson, who stayed on as a director and shareholder. There were further discussions on a buyout in 2019 after the company failed to grow after 2015.

Adjudicating officer Kevin Baneham wrote that there was no dispute that Mr Wilson then “ousted” Ms Coyle as a director on 1 October 2019 – a move the complainant side claimed had been “premeditated”.

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While Ms Coyle claimed the respondent director “sought to acquire exclusive access to bank accounts”, Mr Wilson claimed that she “had misappropriated monies from the account and had excluded the director”, Mr Baneham wrote.

In a October 11th 2019 email to a client seen by the tribunal, the respondent director told a company client: “Unfortunately we have had a breach [of] security within the firm and this has led to banking fraud potentially by the two people you named … this is being dealt with by the fraud department.”

The WRC was told that the client forwarded the email on to Ms Coyle, calling it “outrageous”.

Ms Coyle said her name had been “tarnished in the industry” by the allegations, which the tribunal noted were not investigated and “never substantiated”.

Three days later on October 14th that year, staff at the firm including the now-ousted Ms Coyle wrote to their boss to complain that they had not been paid – and while three others left and got redundancy payments, the complainant was put formally on layoff, the tribunal heard.

Ms Coyle’s case was that she had been “put on layoff so that she would resign and lose the value of her shareholding”.

Mr Wilson said the company “had not been functioning” and that he had no access to its bank accounts.

“Unauthorised payments had caused the financial difficulties and led to the layoffs,” he added.

He argued said fair procedures had been applied and the complainant’s employment ended in a “genuine redundancy” in May 2020.

The complainant’s solicitor, Wendy Doyle, argued that the work previously performed by the complainant was still being done.

“Given the animosity in this case, little can be said to be ‘impersonal’,” wrote adjudicating officer Kevin Baneham in his decision, published on Wednesday.

“It was established in cross-examination that the director was paid consultancy fees for his involvement in the running of the respondent business following the ousting of the complainant and her fellow director. There was, therefore, no ‘change’,” Mr Baneham wrote.

“The decision was purely personal. The complainant was ousted as director, then laid off and dismissed as an employee. It follows from the above that the complainant was unfairly dismissed from her employment,” he concluded.

He noted that the company had already made a redundancy payment, but awarded €25,000 in redress for her losses arising from the unfair dismissal.

Ms Coyle was awarded €3,000 by the WRC in 2021 for alleged unilateral changes to her terms and conditions of employment – a decision later overturned after the company appealed to the Labour Court.

A second statutory complaint to the WRC by a colleague of Ms Coyle’s is awaiting a decision.