The High Court ordered four defendants trading as R.I. Investment Group to pay Joe Simpson €137,533, with interest from 1 November 2008, and awarded him costs assessed on the scale of the award and a three-day action. The order finalised proceedings after an earlier judgment had determined Simpson’s entitlements but left valuation and costs issues unresolved.
Mr Justice Clarke said the €137,533 comprised €16,667 in salary arrears, €46,154 in pay in lieu of notice, a €50,000 bonus and €24,712 for a nominated pension fund. The pension sum had not been paid into the fund, so the court awarded judgment for that amount. The judge said interest was payable under section 22 of the Courts Act 1981 because the sums were due by 1 November 2008 and arose in a commercial context.
A claim for a share of the net value of development projects was abandoned after the defendants’ valuation put their net value at zero and Simpson’s experts took a different view. The judge had proposed an oral hearing to resolve the valuation dispute, but Simpson could not secure a relevant witness and stopped pursuing the claim. The court made no award under that heading.
The court also declined to award Simpson any portion of the Titan monies. His renewed argument concerned money said to have gone into the Gold Avenue project, in which he had no involvement. The judge concluded that the claim could not succeed under the contract’s profit-share calculation, which allowed for the defendants to receive salaries totalling €2 million before profits were calculated.
On costs, the judge noted that Simpson had succeeded on the ordinary employment claims and that the defendants had maintained he was entitled to nothing. He reduced the costs allowed to reflect the Titan issue, on which Simpson had failed: costs were to be taxed on the basis of a three-day action rather than the four-day hearing. Simpson was not entitled to costs arising after the principal judgment, and costs incurred by the defendants on the post-judgment valuation issue could be set off against the costs of finalising the proceedings. He was also awarded costs of three specified interlocutory matters.