N M Hosie (sitting alone) Mr N Hepburn v Represented by: Mr B Nichol – Solicitor Hexagon Sociedad Anonima — 2019

The hearing was a preliminary issue on territorial jurisdiction. The tribunal recorded that the claim was described as a complaint of automatic unfair dismissal for making a protected disclosure, and noted that a separate standard unfair dismissal complaint may also have been intended, though that was not entirely clear. The claimant was a UK national, resident and homeowner in Scotland, but he worked exclusively in Equatorial Guinea for Hexagon and its predecessor WGEG.

The tribunal reviewed the territorial scope authorities, including Lawson, Ravat, Duncombe, Bates van Winkelhof and Powell. It treated the question as a balancing exercise: whether the connection with Great Britain and British employment law was sufficiently strong to displace the normal territorial pull of the place where the claimant worked.

In that balancing exercise, the tribunal gave weight to the Scotland governing law and exclusive Scots jurisdiction clause in the claimant's contract, which applied to UK passport holders, and to the involvement of Jim Beveridge, based in Aberdeen, in correspondence about the claimant's safety complaint. It also noted that the claimant underwent one day of FOET training in Aberdeen and was paid for it.

Against that, the tribunal noted that the claimant did all of his work in Equatorial Guinea, was paid in US dollars, was outside UK PAYE and National Insurance, worked on an asset moored off Equatorial Guinea, and was employed by non-UK incorporated entities. It concluded that the factors pointing towards Great Britain outweighed the territorial pull of the place of work, so there was jurisdiction to consider the claim. No merits finding or remedy was made, and the case was to proceed to a final hearing.