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Renee Montgomery, Isabelee Yacoubou Photo: FIBA Europe/UNI SEAT Gyor
Eleven and a half months ago we wrote about the ugly parting of ways between Renee Montgomery and Hungarian club Uni Seat Gyor, which included both sides blaming each other for all of it.
A brief reminder – Montgomery sat out a couple of practices on October 28 and 29 of 2011 because she claimed the team was more than 15 days late with 20’000$ payment scheduled for her arrival and passing of medical exams. The team terminated her contract soon after for not fulfilling her contractual obligations to attend practices.
Montgomery had received payment for the first month – 18’000$, so she asked for the remainder of her 150’000$ contract that was not paid – 132’000$ plus penalty fees, plus inflation.
Arbitrator ruled that due to wording of the contract Montgomery was not entitled to sit out practices or games because of the delayed payments Due to team not notifying her of the results of medicals within 10 days after her arrival, she had officially passed the medicals at that tenth day. October 28 was 8 days removed from that date. Despite that the arbitrator ruled that the team were not right to terminate the contract with Montgomery due to a couple of missed practices. 2 practices and a film session were deemed not very serious breach of contract. Montgomery had also attended all practices before officially having passed her medical exams, even though she was not contractually obliged to do so, in fact, her practice attendance record was perfect prior to October 28. Her concerns for team’s ability to pay the owed sum were deemed reasonable by the arbitrator.
The arbitrator awarded Montgomery 63’000$ for time period until she signed with Tarsus in Turkey on March 1. She was also awarded the 20’000$ payment for her arrival and passing the medical exams. Add to that 700$ in penalty fees and 1486.95$ for her airfare home and it all sums up to 85’186.95$ (plus 5% annual inflation fee).
Montgomery’s claims for bonuses for that season (based on team performance, it sums up to 30’000$) were dismissed as were her claims for 3 more thousand she spent on transporting boxes from America and buying stuff for her apartment in Hungary.
In the dismissal e-mail sent to Montgomery, Uni Gyor wrote they would ask for 60’000$ from her for the damages she’s done to the team’s reputation. In their counter claim to BAT, the team did not specify any amounts for damages done to them. Nonetheless those claims were also dismissed.
Gyor also owe 15’000$ to her agents LBM Management as well as 17’000 in legal and BAT fees. It all sums up to 117’186.95$ for Gyor to pay the claimants.
You can read the full 33 page award in this pdf.
