Former Crystal Palace manager Tony Pulis has been ordered to pay Crystal Palace £3.7m after a High Court battle over the way in which he left the club at the start of the 2014-15 Premier League season.
The current West Bromwich Albion manager challenged the result of a Premier League Managers’ Arbitration Tribunal at the High Court after it was deemed that he should pay compensation to the Eagles, after deceiving the club into the payment of a bonus early, a bonus which he was due to receive at the end of August for keeping Palace in the Premier League.
In details of the tribunal which were published on Monday, it was revealed that Pulis assured Steve Parish and the club that he was committed to the club and would be staying at the club until at least 31st August 2014, the date the payment of the Premier League bonus was due to be paid.
He had told the club that he needed the money urgently so that “he could buy some land for his children” but Judge Sir Michael Burton, has found that there is a “lack of evidence” to support this claim put forward by Pulis.
It was also claimed by the former Palace boss that a “heated players meeting” had taken place on 12th August but the mediation panel set up by the FA had ruled that it had taken place on 8th August – four days before he received his bonus early. This is despite witness statements from former Eagles player Stuart O’Keefe, Lewis Price and Barry Bannan claiming that it did in fact happen on 12th August.
Those statements were dismissed by the judge at the High Court due to evidence provided by Parish on his whereabouts on the 12th August, showing he wasn’t at the training ground – this includes taxi receipts and his presence at a hairdressers that day.
On 13th August, Tony Pulis informed the club that he wanted to leave, with his departure coming the day after on 14th, the eve of a new Premier league season and just a week after receiving his bonus payment early.
Arbitrators concluded that Pulis had made “false representations” and “deliberately misled” Steve Parish “concerning his intentions” about being “committed to the club” to and beyond the payment date of his Premier League bonus on 31st August 2014.
Tony Pulis has been ordered to pay liquidated damages for £1.5m as well as £2.276m damages “for deceit”.
