Stagehand Leon Donnelly who had worked backstage on hit play War Horse at the New London Theatre had sued the theatre impresario's company for breach of contract and wrongful dismissal. He claimed that he had spoken up against racist bullying and a culture of backstage drinking by fellow workers on the show, but that rather than being thanked he was sacked as a troublemaker. RUG management launched their own investigation into Donnelly's concerns but had found them to be groundless. Donnelly had taken his grievances to the Central London Employment Tribunal however last week the tribunal ruled unanimously that both of his claims were "not well-founded".
A Really Useful Group spokesman said: “We are very pleased that this case has now been resolved. We always had complete confidence in our staff and our own thorough investigations revealed the lack of truth in Mr Donnelly’s allegations against many Really Useful Group employees. We are therefore satisfied that the tribunal has found that we have acted in the correct and proper manner in our dealings with Mr Donnelly. We wish him the best of luck with his future career and are relieved that we can now return to our day to day business of developing and producing theatrical shows around the world.”
Cases like this can be extremely damaging for companies' reputations so Andrew Lloyd Webber will no doubt be relieved that this claim has been dealt with succinctly and definitively.
[posted by James, 18/05/2011]