UK: Molson Coors wins U.K. lawsuit

A London appeals court has dismissed a claim for bonus pay by some 500 employees in Molson Coors Brewing Co.'s United Kingdom division, The Denver Business Journal posted on January 25.

Based in Denver and Montreal, Canada, Molson Coors (NYSE: TAP) is the world's fifth-largest brewer as the maker of Coors, Molson, Carling and Keystone Light beers. Its Coors Brewing Co. division is located in Golden.

The Molson Coors employees involved in the case work at a Burton-on-Trent brewery in central England, and contend the company owes them as much as $1.2 million (600,000 British pounds) under a profit-sharing plan. The North American brewer set up the plan after it bought the brewery from Bass Group Plc of England in 2002.

Under Bass' profit-sharing plan, workers were entitled to buy shares in the company generally worth 4 percent to 5 percent of their annual wages, according the judgment. After the Molson Coors deal, the new owner set up a plan based on earnings targets.

The British workers sued Molson Coors a few years ago, saying the company unlawfully deducted 4 percent of workers' gross income after the brewer didn't meet growth targets. An employment tribunal supported the employees' case in 2005, but an appeals board last year overturned the decision, leading to the appeal.

The London appeals court refused to hear the case because it's a breach-of-contract claim, rather than a wage dispute governed by employee-rights law, according to Bloomberg. "As long as they remain in the employment of Coors, it is in the county court that the claimants must seek remedy," Justice Nicholas Wilson wrote in the judgment. The appeals court urged both parties in the case to settle their dispute.