An employee who has no part of decision making regarding his pay must be paid under contract law.
If the bonus is a reward for work done and he performs the work according to the agreement, he must be paid.
However, bonuses paid to those who were part of the decision making regarding bonuses, conditions for getting them, amounts, etc., are in a different category.
In bankruptcies, judges have held that persons in that category have bled the company to the detriment of their creditors, put themselves at the head of the line, and must return the money.
I believe there is a 90 day rule that allows the judge in bankruptcy to review all payments and call for the return of money that was paid to any creditor the judge deems to have received preferential treatment.
My point is that there could be some defect in the contracts to pay the very top people who made the bonus rules that would allow a judge to legally rule that the bonuses are a conspiracy to bleed the company of its funds.
That said, none of us know the facts and it would take some really smart lawyers and the courts to sort it all out.
I'm quite familiar with preferential payments, unfortunately. (I was deemed to have received one by a receiver who sued for recovery even though I had been paid for work done after the declaration of bankruptcy which is specifically exempted from consideration to be a preferential payment. My lawyer advised me to settle. In other precincts, they call this extortion.) There is, unfortunately, no bankruptcy to consider here.
ML/NJ