Hi. Quick rundown: my inlaws (oldish people) owned 2 shops. A guy says he want to buy shop 1. They give him the oppertunity to run the shop to see if he is interested, if he is ready hell make them an offer (knowing the original purchase price of the shop, and stating he is waiting for his money to clear soon). In the meantime my inlaws decide to cover their bases, and employee him legally. After a period of time, around 7 months, he makes an offer for the shop, lowballing by around half (he never wanted to buy in the first place, well get to that). My inlaws decide to sell shop 2 since shop 1 is easier to run, and 2 is too much to run for them, even though it is small coastel shops. Shop 2 gets sold, and they decide to downscale and ask this person to leave, seeing he has no interest in buying the shop, and they cant afford him anyway. They give him a severence package for the few months he was there.

The second shop that was supposed to be sold doesnt happen on the exact date, and they need to manage it for a few more weeks, so they get a casual worker in for 30 days to run shop 1 where they retrenched this guy. They could not ask him, since he opened a similar shop selling the EXACT same product in the SAME complex as them 2 shops down (as i said, I think he was just learning the business and not intending to buy at all).

He, instead of talking to them, runs to the CCMA and opens a complaint, stating that they should have asked him to work there for that period, since he was retrenched. All the paperwork is in order on our side, the CCMA case is tomorrow, just want to make sure I covered all my bases. Already spoke to a guy in the DOL and he said all the paperwork and the case is in order. I also want to know, if I can return the favour to this guy and sue him for damages or something?