Fiera l-Kbira organiser ordered to pay former employee €12,000 in commissions

The company engaged to sell floor space at the 2014 Fiera l-Kbira (Grand Fair) at Montekristo Estates has been ordered to pay almost €12,000 in overdue commissions to a former employee who had coordinated the event, after a court ruled that a draft contract still bound the parties.

After his employment was terminated, effective September 2014, due to “failure to meet the financial and sales targets aspect of our original agreement,” event coordinator Gunther Micallef Decesare had filed legal action before the First Hall of the Civil Court, claiming that Expo Events Ltd had failed to honour a contract signed by the parties in January 2014.

Under that contract, Micallef Decesare had been entitled to a €1,800 basic monthly salary, as well as to commission on the net value of turnover related to floor space. The plaintiff had argued that the turnover in question had been €276,059 at the time his employment was terminated, and that this translated into a commission of €11,862 including VAT, in addition to the basic salary, which Expo Events Ltd had not paid him. He told the First Hall of the Civil Court, presided by Judge Mintoff how, not long before his dismissal, he had been approached by Expo Events' director Luke Gatt offering him other deals, but that he had refused to consider them until he was paid his commission.

The company had rebutted the claim, which it said was based on a draft agreement. The final contract had never been concluded and signed “exclusively due to the plaintiff's inaction and other reasons for which the plaintiff is exclusively at fault,” Expo Events has argued.

The draft agreement had been subject to the condition that the full contract of employment be entered into by a certain date and this had not happened. The company further posited that the plaintiff had failed to meet agreed targets and that his actions had caused the company to suffer damages.

With regards to not meeting targets, the First Hall of the Civil Court, presided by Judge Mintoff observed that Micallef Decesare had submitted that not only had the whole exhibition area been sold, but that this area had to be enlarged to accommodate demand. The termination of his employment had been an attempt to cheat him of the commission he had earned, he said. A fellow employee on an identical working agreement had confirmed that there had been no targets.

The only reason that the other employee had received his commission, the other employee said, was because he had threatened to quit before the Weddings Fair unless he was paid. The company had felt that it was able to organise it without Micallef Decesare and therefore had no further use for the plaintiff, the witness said.

The defendants had failed to substantiate their counter-allegations of having lost business due to Micallef Decesare engaging their rival company MFCC to provide panels for stands.

“Whilst the defendant company, through its director, is trying to blame the plaintiff for damages caused by the loss of the contract with Montekristo Estates...MKIC's [Montekristo's holding company] general manager had testified that the problem had been created by management's projected shortfalls in profits,” the judge noted. The sales targets had been reached and MKIC's former financial controller had testified that when they had found some contracts missing, they had been given copies of them by Luke Gatt. “Thus, the principal allegation made by Gatt against the plaintiff, of having lost some contracts was nullified.”

The court found for the plaintiff, holding that whilst it was true that the employment agreement was a preliminary one, the case was about commission and not about a contract of employment or its termination. It had been up to the defendants to prove that a subsequent agreement had been entered into, noting that this “had certainly not been done.” Micallef Decesare's FS3 showed that the company had employed the man on the strength of the draft agreement and the company's payment of the other employee in accordance with the draft's conditions of employment simply confirmed this, the court said.

Export Events Ltd was ordered to pay Micallef Decesare €11,862 with commercial interest calculated from the date of judgement till the amount was settled.