Your Employer Promised a Bonus but Never Paid: Can an Oral Agreement Be Enforced in New York?

On September 3, 2026, the Appellate Division, First Department, decided Beach v Touradji Capital Mgt., LP, 2026 NY Slip Op 05231 (1st Dept Sept. 3, 2026). Two former portfolio managers allege that their employer promised them, out loud and never on paper, a fixed percentage of the trading profits on the portfolios they ran, and never paid it. Filed in 2008 and tried twice, the bonus claim still has no verdict, and the decision sends it back for a third trial.

I represent employees on Long Island. The sentence I hear most often about a handshake bonus is “I have nothing in writing, so I have nothing.” That is wrong.

Take a sales manager at a building-supply distributor in Farmingdale. At her interview in March 2025, the owner offered base salary plus ten percent of the gross margin on the accounts she brings in, paid each February. Nothing was signed. She brought in the accounts. In February 2026 the check was a fraction of the number, and she was told the company “had a tough year.” Our unpaid bonus guide covers the general rules; this post covers the promise nobody wrote down.

Two trials, no verdict: what Touradji shows

Gentry Beach and Robert Vollero sued Touradji Capital Management, LP, a commodities hedge fund, and its founder, Paul Touradji. The first verdict was overturned in Beach v Touradji Capital Mgt., LP, 179 AD3d 474 (1st Dept 2020). The second trial ran a month. The jury deadlocked on the breach of contract claim; therefore, it never reached the employer’s faithless servant defense. The same jury rejected all five of the employer’s counterclaims, including breach of fiduciary duty and misappropriation of trade secrets. The trial court set aside that verdict and reinstated the counterclaims. On September 3, 2026, the First Department unanimously reversed, on the law, and reinstated the jury’s verdict.

Read the decision for what it does not say. It does not hold that the oral agreement was enforceable or that the bonuses were owed; the bonus claim is untried. What it shows is that an oral bonus promise is litigable, and that the fight is over proof. Indeed, it can be a long one. The Farmingdale manager’s case is smaller; however, it turns on the same question.

An unpaid bonus is one of three things

Whether the bonus is wages, a contract term or a discretionary award decides what you can recover.

The bonus is wages

Labor Law § 190(1) defines wages as “the earnings of an employee for labor or services rendered, regardless of whether the amount of earnings is determined on a time, piece, commission or other basis.” In Ryan v Kellogg Partners Inst. Servs., 19 NY3d 1 (2012), the Court of Appeals held that a guaranteed bonus that is compensation for the employee’s own services is wages. Labor Law § 193(5) adds: “There is no exception to liability under this section for the unauthorized failure to pay wages, benefits or wage supplements.”

For a commission salesperson, Labor Law § 191(1)(c) adds that the agreed terms of employment “shall be reduced to writing, signed by both the employer and the commission salesperson,” and that “the failure of an employer to produce such written terms of employment, upon request of the commissioner, shall give rise to a presumption that the terms of employment that the commissioned salesperson has presented are the agreed terms of employment.”

Whether the Farmingdale manager is a commission salesperson turns on her principal activity, not her title; Labor Law § 190(6) excludes an employee “whose principal activity is of a supervisory, managerial, executive or administrative nature.” If she sells, the writing requirement and its presumption are hers; if she mainly manages other salespeople, they are not.

The bonus is a contract term

A promised bonus that is not wages is still a promise. The claim is breach of contract: the unpaid bonus, without the Labor Law’s liquidated damages or attorney’s fees.

The bonus is discretionary

In Truelove v Northeast Capital & Advisory, 95 NY2d 220 (2000), the Court of Appeals held that a discretionary bonus tied to the firm’s financial success, not to the employee’s own work, is not wages. If the employer truly kept the decision for itself each year, there is usually no claim at all.

The question is always what the bonus was for. A fixed percentage of the profits on the portfolios you managed is a wages argument; “we will see how the year goes” is discretionary. Most cases sit between them.

Here, the Farmingdale manager’s number was fixed by a formula from her own accounts and was in the offer that got her to take the job. That is the Ryan argument. “Had a tough year” is the Truelove answer, and the offer email meets it.

What each claim pays

A bonus that is wages pays the bonus, liquidated damages, attorney’s fees and interest; a bonus that is only a contract term pays the bonus.

Both are state-law claims; the Fair Labor Standards Act sets a floor for minimum wage and overtime and does not enforce a promise to pay a bonus above that floor. Labor Law § 198(2) says the remedies “may be enforced simultaneously or consecutively so far as not inconsistent with each other.” Consequently, the complaint pleads both, and the wages question is decided on the proof.

”It was never in writing” is not the end

A bonus for the current year does not need a signed writing to be enforced. General Obligations Law § 5-701(a)(1) voids an agreement “unless it or some note or memorandum thereof be in writing, and subscribed by the party to be charged therewith,” if the agreement “by its terms is not to be performed within one year from the making thereof.”

The Farmingdale manager’s bonus, promised in March 2025 and payable in February 2026, is performable within a year of the promise; therefore, as the Court of Appeals held in Ryan v Kellogg Partners Inst. Servs., 19 NY3d 1 (2012), an oral bonus agreement performable within a year is outside the statute of frauds.

A multi-year deal is different. “Ten percent every year for the next three years” is, by its terms, not to be performed within one year and needs a signed writing, or at least “some note or memorandum” of it. Whether a particular email or text is enough is the first question I ask.

Nothing the Farmingdale manager failed to sign ends her case. What she kept decides it.

The proof that carries an oral promise

Most “oral” promises leave a paper trail. In my experience the fight is rarely over whether the words were said; it is over what they meant, and the documents answer that. It is incumbent upon you to keep them, in the order I ask for them:

1. The offer email, and the texts after it. “Base salary plus ten percent of gross margin on your book,” in the offer email, is the best document in the case; a manager’s later text, “your number this year is ten points, same as last year,” is the terms in the manager’s own words.
2. The compensation plan. If a plan exists and your bonus computes under it, the promise was never really oral.
3. Last year’s payment. Pay stubs with the bonus line and the W-2s show the amount and the timing. An employer that paid the formula last year has a hard time saying there was no formula.
4. Your own written request. A commission salesperson is entitled, under Labor Law § 191(1)(c), to “a statement of earnings paid or due and unpaid” on written request. Keep the answer, or the silence.
5. Your personnel file. From November 8, 2026, Labor Law § 210-b will give you a copy of your personnel file on written request. Our personnel file guide explains the request.

Your employer will move to dismiss, and everything will be argued. Summary judgment is the make-or-break point, and it gets decided on paper: the offer email, the texts that repeat the number, last year’s pay stub. I tell employers to watch what they say and to document better, in the personnel file and not in someone’s memory. The same advice is yours. Write the promise down the day it is made and keep every message that repeats the number. Then ask for the money in writing.

Punished for asking: the two retaliation claims

The week the employee asks for the money in writing is often the week the write-up or the termination arrives. Two statutes reach that, and I plead both.

The complaint to your employer

Under Labor Law § 215(1)(a), no employer “shall discharge, threaten, penalize, or in any other manner discriminate or retaliate against any employee” because the employee “has made a complaint to his or her employer” about conduct the employee “reasonably and in good faith, believes violates any provision of this chapter.” The complaint “need not make explicit reference to any section or provision of this chapter.” “I have not been paid the bonus I was promised” is enough.

The remedies are in Labor Law § 215(2)(a): reinstatement or front pay, lost compensation “and damages,” liquidated damages of up to $20,000, costs and attorney’s fees, and “all appropriate relief.” Lost compensation and liquidated damages are statutory. Non-economic damages are pleaded under “all appropriate relief.” The action is brought within two years, with notice to the Attorney General at or before filing.

The whistleblower claim

The whistleblower statute is where the money is. Under Labor Law § 740(2)(a), an employer “shall not take any retaliatory action against an employee” because the employee “discloses, or threatens to disclose to a supervisor or to a public body an activity, policy or practice of the employer that the employee reasonably believes is in violation of law, rule or regulation.” If the bonus is wages, not paying it violates the Labor Law, and the whistleblower section asks only whether the employee reasonably believed that.

Relief under Labor Law § 740(5): reinstatement or front pay, “compensation for lost wages, benefits and other remuneration,” attorney’s fees, a civil penalty of up to $10,000, and “punitive damages, if the violation was willful, malicious or wanton,” before a jury and within two years of the retaliatory action.

A written request to your manager or HR is both the complaint and the disclosure. Under Labor Law § 740(3), a disclosure to a public body is protected only after a good faith effort to raise the practice with a supervisor, with limited exceptions; therefore, the letter to your employer comes first. Our wage theft retaliation guide and employer retaliation page cover how those cases are built.

If the Farmingdale manager asks in writing in March 2026 and is fired in April 2026, her letter is the first exhibit in both claims.

The first week, in order

Do these in order, and do the first two before you say anything at work.

Bring these to the first call:

• The offer email or letter, and any text stating the number.
• Last year’s pay stub with the bonus line, and the W-2.
• Your dated note of the promise.
• Your written request, and any reply.

Sources

• Beach v Touradji Capital Mgt., LP, 2026 NY Slip Op 05231: https://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/current/3dseries/2026/2026_05231.shtml
• Labor Law § 190: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/LAB/190
• Labor Law § 191: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/LAB/191
• Labor Law § 193: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/LAB/193
• Labor Law § 198: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/LAB/198
• Labor Law § 215: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/LAB/215
• Labor Law § 740: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/LAB/740
• General Obligations Law § 5-701: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/GOB/5-701

---

Eighteen years after two portfolio managers first sued over a bonus nobody wrote down, no court has said whether they get it. The Farmingdale manager’s case does not have to run that long. Her offer email (“base plus ten of GM on your accounts, paid Feb”) fixes the number, her December margin report fixes the base, and her February pay stub shows the shortfall. That is the file our Long Island wage and hour practice asks for first.

If your employer promised a bonus and has not paid it, call (516) 750-0595 with the offer email, or request a free case review.