12:55 pm, November 5, 2024
A supercar salesman has won his unfair dismissal case after getting into a heated argument with his boss and asking him ‘do you want to fight me?’
Gregory Dunning was dismissed without notice in June 2022 from Grange Motors in Tunbridge Wells, and was told when he appealed that he had been dismissed for ‘asking your general manager if he wanted to have a fight’.
The Lamborghini salesman claimed at an employment tribunal that he felt ‘belittled’ and ‘threatened’ by his boss, Stuart Lee, when he was asked to share his commission with a junior.
When he refused he was subsequently told by Lee to ‘grow some f****** balls’, according to the Daily Mail.
The judge has now ordered that Dunning receive £4,085 in compensation, and ruled that he was not physically aggressive and therefore should not have been sacked.
Dunning began working at the Tunbridge Wells Lamborghini in February 2021, with the South African sales manager earning £20,000 plus commission at the time.
The tribunal heard that in January 2022, he was ‘not happy’ about signing a new contract which increased his basic pay but altered his commission.
During the tribunal, it was said that the relationship soured following a dispute about expenses on Lee’s trip to Italy.
On the day in question, the tribunal heard that Lee entered the sales manager’s office for a discussion about a junior employee receiving part of the commission from a recent sale.
He is said to have told Dunning that the junior staff member had been involved in subsequent contact with the client and felt they were partly responsible for the deal.
According to the Daily Mail, the panel were told that Lee then told Dunning to hand over ‘some or all’ of the commission.
The junior employee left getting upset before Lee ‘threatened’ to take the commission already paid. When Dunning said he would leave if that happened, his boss leaned over the desk and told him to ‘grow some balls and f****** do it’.
It was heard after this that Dunning asked Lee if he ‘wanted to fight’ him.
The tribunal was also told that Lee was the shown on the CCTV to be the ‘most irate’.
Employment judge Amanda Hart said that Dunning was not physically aggressive towards Lee – saying: ‘We consider this to be an ambiguous phrase and that it could be construed as do you want to have an argument rather than an invitation for a physical fight.
‘This is a natural construction of these words regardless of whether or not they are a standard South African turn of phrase.’
His claim of wrongful dismissal succeeded and he was awarded three months pay, equivalent to £4,085.
Image: Grange Motors Lamborghini and Bentley Tunbridge Wells/Google Maps
