Shop manager ordered to pay owner €37,000 in undeposited earnings

A court has ordered a former manager of a Bay Street clothes shop to pay the owner €36,789.40 after it found that she had failed to deposit all of the shop's earnings.

The case was filed by Marthese Abela, owner of So Divine, against Nicola Winter.

Winter was employed as manager between 2009 and 2012, before being sacked after she set up a website in competition with the shop.

Abela had told the court that she began to notice discrepancies between the daily cash takings and actual deposits. After meetings between the parties, in 2012 Winter signed a declaration assuming responsibility for the shortfall and pledging to repay them.

Abela claimed that the amount due totalled €58,275.

However Winter denied ever assuming liability, saying that she had only signed a declaration to the effect that she should have looked into it and that, as manager, she would be responsible if the claims turned out to be true.

Winter added that she was not the only person who would deposit the earnings, adding that when she did, she would not check the contents of the envelopes.

She claimed to have never admitted to stealing anything and that she had assumed, at the meeting, that the missing money in question amounted to €2,700.

Winter noted that in their calculations, the prosecution had included periods during which she was not working or was on maternity leave.

The court, after examining the evidence and the calculations that had been submitted by the prosecution, was in no doubt that the accused had not deposited the shop's takings in full.

It, however, also noted errors in the calculations: on some occasions, the accused had indeed been on leave and deposits had been made by other persons. On others, deposits exceeded the amounts from the till and no explanation was given in this regard.

Following a rigorous analysis of the accounts, Judge Anthony Ellul held that the sum which had not been deposited amounted to €36,789.40, which he then ordered Winter to pay the shopowner.