Former Manchester City defender Benjamin Mendy has been awarded the majority of £11 million in unpaid wages by a tribunal, following his suspension by the Football Association (FA) while he faced criminal charges.
A two-day video hearing at Manchester employment tribunal last month heard evidence from the French footballer and his former club, both of whom were represented by KC barristers.
Employment Judge Joanne Dunlop said in her decision this week: “I doubt that quite so much legal expertise and endeavour has ever before been expended in the prosecution and defence of a wages claim brought by a single claimant.
“But then, I am also fairly sure that no other single claimant has ever alleged that sums in the region of £11 million have been deducted from his wages.”
Criminal proceedings
Mendy, who was the world’s most expensive defender when he signed for Man City in 2017, challenged the Premier League’s decision not to pay his £6 million salary for nearly two years after he was charged with rape and attempted rape.
In August 2021, Mendy was remanded in custody following allegations of serious sexual offences. At the end of September, Man City informed him it would stop paying his wages. That situation continued until his contract expired at the end of June 2023, when he transferred to the French club FC Lorient.
His tribunal claim included two periods when Mendy was remanded in custody – from 1 September 2021 to 7 January 2022 and, again, from 30 December 2022 to 17 January 2023. Outside these periods, he was prevented from fulfilling his contractual obligations, including training and playing, by an FA suspension and his bail conditions.
When Mendy joined Man City he was 23 years old. The tribunal summarised that he had developed a taste for “partying”, a euphemistic term which included having frequent casual sexual encounters with women, often whom he had only just met.
During 2020, Mendy held numerous parties contravening Covid lockdown measures in force 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 arrested again in January 2021 after a second woman reported him to police, accusing him of sexually assaulting her at a party at his home.
The 30-year-old was eventually cleared of all charges.
Binary choice
The tribunal heard from Mendy’s counsel, Nick de Marco KC, that there was no express term in his contract permitting deductions or stoppage to his pay. His contract presented Man City with a binary choice: to follow its dismissal procedure which, if resulting in dismissal, would have freed Mendy to contract with another club; or to keep him under contract and continue paying him.
He said there was no legitimate mechanism to keep him under contract while refusing to pay him.
Sean Jones KC, for Man City, submitted that there may be an implied term to permit the employer to stop paying wages “in such circumstances”.
He submitted that the FA suspension, Mendy being in custody and his bail terms in the relevant periods each clearly amounted to a full impediment to Mendy being able to perform his contract.
The judge said both sides presented arguments on whether or not Mendy deserved to be paid his wages.
Mendy’s position is that he is an innocent man whose career has been ruined and life blighted by false sexual allegations, and that the club effectively abandoned him in his hour of need.
Man City’s position is that Mendy largely brought his troubles upon himself and ignored sensible advice and “warning after warning” in his self-destructive pursuit of his partying lifestyle. “Both these narratives have validity,” said the judgment, “and there is no one cause of the chain of events which unfolded in this case.”
The judge said: “The only question for me is whether Manchester City was legally entitled to withhold that pay.”
Ready and willing
The judge found Mendy was “ready and willing” to work during the non-custody periods, and was prevented from doing so by impediments (the FA suspension and bail conditions) which were unavoidable or involuntary on his part.
“In those circumstances,” said the judge, “and absent any authorisation in the contract for the employer to withhold pay, he was entitled to be paid.”
In contrast, during the periods he was remanded in custody, his inability to perform the contract was, in part, due to his own culpable actions in breaching his bail conditions. In these circumstances, the judge found that Man City was entitled to withhold his pay.
In a statement, Mendy thanked his lawyers and said: “Having had to wait for three years for my wages, I am delighted with the decision and sincerely hope that the club will now do the honourable thing and pay the outstanding amounts, as well as the other amounts promised to me under the contract, without further delay, so I can finally put this difficult part of my life behind me.”
The judgment means Mendy will be entitled to unpaid wages for around 17 of the 22 months for which he was claiming, amounting to approximately £8.5 million. The judge has written to both parties to ensure that they act in a timely way to agree the amount owed.
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