Mr S Seyfollahi v DNT Company Ltd — 2021

Mr S Seyfollahi was employed by DNT Company Ltd from 2 August 2010 and his employment ended on 30 October 2020. He brought claims including unfair dismissal and notice pay. During the hearing he withdrew his holiday pay claim. The tribunal found that a redundancy situation existed in the sense that the respondent genuinely believed it could operate with one fewer Commercial Director, but that was not the sole or principal reason for dismissal.

The tribunal found evidence casting serious doubt on the respondent's stated reason for dismissal. It accepted that, before the redundancy process, the respondent had sought legal advice about difficulties associated with the claimant and options for terminating his employment, had monitored his emails without his knowledge from about April 2019, and had taken into account a grievance against him when scoring him. It also found that the selection matrix was shaped around Mr Feek's perception of the claimant and Mr Williams, especially in relation to computer skills, and that the criteria were not applied in an objective or transparent way. The claimant was not given a proper opportunity to comment on the proposed criteria before they were used, and the tribunal found there was no genuine consultation because the decision had effectively been made before the process ran its course.

The appeal did not cure those defects. The tribunal found that Mr Feek did not disclose important information to Mr Jones, the appeal decision-maker, and that this compounded the unfairness. For those reasons the unfair dismissal claim succeeded. Remedy was not assessed in this judgment and was left to a separate hearing, with the question of Polkey or contributory conduct reserved.

On notice pay, the tribunal held that no contractual term had been agreed entitling the claimant to three months' notice. It found that the 2016 draft contract was never accepted, that there had been no clear oral agreement to vary the notice term, and that the statutory minimum notice period therefore applied. As the claimant had been paid 10 weeks' notice pay, his breach of contract / notice pay claim was dismissed.