Ms Yoana Yoshovska v Goldman Sachs International — 2022

Ms Yoshovska brought a complaint under section 11 of the Employment Relations Act 1999, saying Goldman Sachs International failed to allow her to be accompanied at a meeting on 29 September 2020. The tribunal accepted for present purposes that the meeting was a disciplinary hearing and that she was a worker, and recorded that she had been told only that the meeting was a "catch-up" before being told at the meeting that she was dismissed with notice. It was also common ground that she did not ask to be accompanied and that the respondent did not expressly refuse such a request.

The respondent applied to strike out the claim under rule 37(1)(a), arguing that section 10 of the 1999 Act only applies where the worker makes a reasonable request to be accompanied. The tribunal reviewed the strike-out authorities it had been taken to, including Anyanwu, Mechkarov, Ezsias, Dalby, Hasan and Kaur, and also considered the statutory scheme, ACAS guidance, Heathmill, Page, Toal and commentary in Harvey. It noted that the claimant's case had force as a matter of fairness, particularly where an employee is effectively "ambushed" and given no chance to make a request.

However, the tribunal held that the wording of section 10(1) was clear: a reasonable request by the worker is a condition precedent to the statutory accompaniment right. The tribunal said it could not rewrite the provision to treat the claimant as having made a request, even though it accepted that the situation might be relevant to any unfair dismissal complaint. It therefore concluded that the section 11 claim had no reasonable prospect of success and struck it out. The judgment noted that the maximum compensation under section 11 would have been two weeks' pay, capped at £1,076, but no award was made because the claim was struck out.