A judge has ruled that former Manchester City defender Benjamin Mendy is entitled to receive most of the £11 million in wages withheld by the club while he faced rape and sexual assault
charges, from which he was later acquitted.
Mendy, once the world’s most expensive defender when he joined City in 2017, had challenged the club’s decision to suspend his salary from September 2021 until his contract expired in June 2023. The decision followed his charges, which led to his suspension from the club. In July 2023, after a retrial at Chester Crown Court, Mendy was acquitted of one count of rape and one count of attempted rape. Earlier, in January 2023, he was found not guilty of six counts of rape and one count of sexual assault.
In the ruling published on Wednesday, Judge Joanne Dunlop determined that Mendy should receive unpaid wages for periods when he was not held in custody but not for those when he was detained awaiting trial. This means Mendy will be entitled to wages for approximately 17 of the 22 months for which he claimed unpaid earnings.
Mendy was initially arrested in November 2020 following an accusation of rape, and after subsequent allegations, he was remanded in custody in August 2021. Manchester City suspended him without pay after he was charged. Mendy remained in custody until January 2022, then faced another brief period of detention in December 2022.
Judge Dunlop found that Mendy could not claim wages for periods when he was in custody, noting that his detention was partly due to his own breach of bail conditions. However, Mendy was entitled to his wages for two non-custodial periods when he was suspended under FA regulations without any misconduct findings.
“I found that Mr. Mendy was ‘ready and willing’ to work during the non-custody periods,” Judge Dunlop stated, noting that his inability to play was due to involuntary restrictions imposed by the FA and bail conditions. In these cases, she ruled that Manchester City lacked contractual grounds to withhold his pay.
Judge Dunlop added that although both sides argued over whether Mendy “deserved” his withheld wages—citing his disrupted career and Manchester City’s concerns over his lifestyle choices—the legal matter was simply whether the club had the right to withhold his salary. Photo by Ank kumar, Wikimedia commons.