By K C Vijayan, Law Correspondent

SINGAPORE Flyer operators GWC Holdings will not have to pay some $280,000 to its former chief financial officer (CFO) Michael Spitz.

Earlier this week, the High Court overruled a lower court's summary judgment which had ordered the payout.

Mr Spitz, 40, had claimed the sum was owed to him as a sign-on bonus when he joined the company, of which $225,000 remained unpaid and another $54,700 was owed as approved expenses.

The sign-on bonus was part of the perks to draw him from the London office of global finance house Nomura to join GWC in 2007.

But GWC later became unhappy with his work and within a year, he was allowed to leave the firm.

According to court documents, GWC claimed he was allowed to walk away without the firm seeking any compensation, on the understanding he would not sue for the unpaid bonus monies in return.

Defended in the appeal by Senior Counsel Indranee Rajah and Mr Daniel Tan from Drew & Napier, GWC also claimed he would be kept on for other GWC projects in exchange for not seeking the payout.

GWC said it held several discussions with Mr Spitz on this over a few months before his exit last year.

A key factor in the lower court's ruling was the absence of any evidence pointing to an oral agreement from these discussions.

But for the High Court appeal, GWC chairman Florian Bollen, in his submissions, pointed to e-mail messages that were recently found in the account of former chief executive officer Stephan Matter after he had resigned.

He claimed the contents of these e-mail messages last year support GWC's account of the oral discussions.

But Mr Spitz countered in his submissions that there was only one new e-mail together with other e-mail messages that had been previously brought up and they were irrelevant to the key issue.

His lawyers, Ms Esther Yee and Mr Jiang Ke Yue from Lee & Lee, argued that the new evidence did not show that he agreed to forgo his claim and was a bid to avoid what was owed to their client in the summary judgment.

A summary judgment is given after hearing the parties' lawyers and reading their submissions without the need for the case to go to trial, where evidence comes directly from witness testimony or through cross examination.

Justice Choo Han Teck's ruling at the closed-door hearing on Monday means the case will go to trial if Mr Spitz opts to pursue the claim.

He withdrew a garnishee order application in the High Court against GWC on Tuesday, a day after Justice Choo's decision. A garnishee order seeks to enforce the amount claimed by a creditor from a debtor's assets.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.