The court considered that Manse PP had no legal grounds to terminate the match director’s employment contract. According to the court, Kohonen caused the club a completely unnecessary trial.
The District Court of Pirkanmaa has given its decision Toni Kohonen and Manse in the dispute between PP.
The district court considered that Manse PP’s decision to fire Kohonen was illegal. The association is obliged to pay Kohonen EUR 13,500 with late payment interest as compensation for the unjustified termination of the employment contract from the end of April 2023. In addition to that, Kohonen must be paid holiday compensation of 1,800 euros, including late payment interest.
Even though Kohonen won his case, he ends up being the one to pay. The court considered that Kohonen has caused an unnecessary miscarriage of justice with his procedure.
According to the court, this is due to the fact that Manse PP had previously offered Kohonen a settlement of 40,000 euros, among other things. In addition, Kohonen would have been offered another settlement. Kohonen had not agreed to either.
The court considered that Kohonen would have reached a better outcome than the district court’s verdict by accepting the settlement.
On this basis, Kohonen is obliged to compensate Manse PP’s court costs, i.e. a total of 36Â 053 euros.
Risk solution?
The contract dispute was discussed in the district court of Pirkanmaa for three whole days at the beginning of February.
During them, the former chairman of the board of Manse PP was consulted, among other things Pirkka Savilahtiwho was involved in the decision on Kohonen’s salary in the fall of 2022.
Kohonen’s recruitment was not unanimous at the time. The reason was that the man had an almost superior player background for domestic baseball, but no game manager experience at all. For this reason, Savilahti had thought about whether recruitment was worth it.
Kohonen was hired as game director in October 2022, but he was fired already in February 2023.
– We had our backs against the wall in the game manager thing. We had to get one, and preferably quickly, Savilahti told the court.
There were occasional disagreements between Kohonen and the board of the club at the time. The government would have liked Kohonen, who lives in Kouvola, to be near Tampere. The game manager spent a lot of time in his hometown. The society obliged Kohonen to monitor working hours.
Short comment
contacted the person who represented Koho in the case Olli Rausteen, who transferred the commenting responsibility to Toni Kohose. has not yet reached Kohos for comment.
Regarding Manse PP, the responsibility for commenting was a centralized lawyer Mika Miesmäe. He still could not say whether the club plans to appeal the decision.
The club has shared its views in a short announcement.
– Getting a solution in the district court was easier, and it is good to continue forward from here.
News updated at 15:28: Added information about the views of Olli Rauste and Mika Miesmäki.