Our client is a financial services company and recruited an HR Manager. They were dissatisfied with her performance and, following discussions, terminated her employment.
The employee raised a grievance raising certain matters for the first time, including the fact that she was dismissed for objecting to a kiss-o-gram who had appeared on the occasion of the Chief Executive’s 50th birthday.
Her grievance was unsuccessful and the dismissal confirmed. The employee raised proceedings in the employment tribunal, claiming unfair dismissal on the grounds that she had asserted a statutory right not to be subject to discrimination under the Sex Discrimination Act, sex discrimination and equal pay. In addition, she brought claims for unlawful deduction from wages. The employer had paid the employee a week’s notice. The employee claimed to have a letter from the company giving her a right to be paid one month’s notice.
This letter had been produced at the grievance hearing. Unfortunately, the author of the letter claimed she had not written any such letter. Moreover it was produced in a font consistent not with the author’s printer but with the employee’s printer, which had not been delivered until some six weeks after the letter was allegedly written.
This matter, was referred to in further and better particulars that we composed on behalf of the company. In addition, the employee had claimed to be a member of a professional body. Evidence showed that the certificates she produced to verify the level of her membership of that body was also forged.
All of this information was produced to the other side by way of further particulars. We also suggested to the employee’s solicitors that they should withdraw their application, failing which, not only would they face an application for costs from us, but there was a genuine possibility that their client would face criminal charges if she persisted in the matter to the employment tribunal and produced falsified documents in that forum.
We were delighted when the solicitor for the Claimant telephoned to advise they were prepared to withdraw. This was an excellent result for our client. Throughout our successful presentation of their case, our client was saved not only valuable management time but potentially a substantial amount of money in legal costs.
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