Behnam Roohizadegan has lost his decade old unfair dismissal case against TechnologyOne, which cost the company $10m to defend.

Federal Court judge Shaun McElwaine ordered the matter be dismissed on Thursday morning.

Mr Roohizadegan did not appear in court, nor did his solicitors, Harmers Workplace Lawyers.

He alleged he was unfairly sacked from his role as Victorian state manager at TechnologyOne on May 18, 2016, and claimed he was fired because exercised or proposed to exercise workplace rights, including claims for contractual entitlements to incentive payments.

Mr Roohizadegan also claimed his employment was terminated because he suffered a mental disability. As well, the applicant alleged TechnologyOne fired him because he was temporarily absent from work because of illness or injury.

TechnologyOne chairman and former chief executive Adrian Di Marco was identified as the second respondent on Mr Roohizadegan’s claim.

Mr Di Marco welcomed the judgement in a statement on Thursday, saying “the judgement confirms that performance issues were the reason for the dismissal”

“This was an executive earning $1m per year who was dismissed because of performance issues,” he said.

He also issued broad criticisms of the Fair Work Act, claiming it is “far from being reasonable or workable, and must be fixed as a matter of urgency”.

“The question that must be asked: How could this dispute end up in court, with the plaintiff alleging 512 contraventions of the Fair Work Act, taking two trials over 10 years, $10m to defend, over four weeks of court testimony for the last trial; and the plaintiff claiming $80m in compensation” he said.

“The Fair Work Act has a reverse onus of proof on the employer. This is a difficult hurdle for a company to jump.

“The court also has the onerous task of attempting to reconstruct the human motivation of the decision maker, to determine the actual reasons in the decision-maker’s mind at the time.”

Mr Roohizadegan had alleged he suffered substantial losses as a result of the termination of his employment, and says he is owed $4.3m in bonus payments that were not paid out to him.

Mr Roohizadegan, represented by Harmers Workplace Lawyers, alleged he was terminated in breach of section 340, 351, and 352 of the Fair Work Act 2009.

TechnologyOne defended the case, and alleged there were genuine reasons to dismiss Mr Roohizadegan, including poor performance that led to reduced revenue.

In 2020, a decision of the Federal Court swung in favour of Mr Roohizadegan. At the time, it was a landmark general protections judgement and awarded the worker $5.2m in compensation, damages and penalties.

But TechnologyOne appealed, and in 2021 a retrial was ordered and the original decision quashed.

Mr Di Marco, who was cross-examined this year during the retrial, alleged Mr Roohizadegan was sacked due to performance issues and bullying allegations that were made against him.

Before he received an email detailing claims against Mr Roohizadegan, he already “had compelling reasons to terminate him” he said during his cross-examination.

“Whether the bullying allegations were correct was irrelevant because I had all the evidence I needed to terminate him,” he said.

“There was no way I could not proceed. I had a team in crisis. I had a team member saying ‘how can TechnologyOne allow this to happen’. I didn’t want to put the team through any more angst.

“(They were under) enormous pressure.”