A for­mer First Cit­i­zens Bank man­ag­er who dis­cov­ered a mi­cro­phone hid­den in­side a smoke de­tec­tor in his of­fice was dis­missed weeks lat­er. Now, the bank has been or­dered to com­pen­sate him.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered this week, Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in up­held a breach of con­tract claim brought by Stephen Pen­nie against First Cit­i­zens Bank, rul­ing that the bank act­ed un­law­ful­ly when it ter­mi­nat­ed his em­ploy­ment in 2018.

Pen­nie re­turned from va­ca­tion in March 2018 to find changes made to his of­fice at the Movi­eTowne Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre branch, where he served as man­ag­er. He claimed a client who was a se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert con­duct­ed checks and de­tect­ed a mi­cro­phone in­stalled in a smoke de­tec­tor. Pen­nie re­port­ed the mat­ter to his line man­ag­er. Ac­cord­ing to his ev­i­dence, the bank’s se­cu­ri­ty ser­vice man­ag­er ad­mit­ted to plac­ing the de­vice dur­ing his ab­sence.