In person For the v Respondent — 2021

The tribunal found that Mr J Iturralde began providing finance and accounting services to Ruby Labs Ltd on 15 August 2018 and continued until 9 April 2021. It accepted that the respondent had once offered him an employment role as CFO, but found that he declined that route and instead drafted his own consultancy agreement, which described him as an independent contractor, provided for invoicing, limited expense recovery, excluded holiday and other employee benefits, and allowed termination on notice. On the evidence, he worked with a great deal of autonomy, usually for only a few hours a day, and the tribunal held that the reality of the relationship matched the consultancy agreement. It therefore found that he was neither an employee nor a worker, so all of his complaints failed at the jurisdictional stage.

The tribunal also found that the termination on 9 April 2021 followed a dispute in which the claimant had become angry about the respondent's treatment of him, made offensive comments about Ms YL, and then used the meetings on 8 and 9 April 2021 and an email sent on 8 April 2021 to threaten the respondent and its co-founders with serious consequences unless he was paid a large exit sum. The tribunal found that the claimant was attempting to blackmail or extort money from the respondent, and that the alleged disclosures about tax, employment status, bonuses, stock options and a share of sale proceeds were not made with a reasonable belief that they showed a legal breach or criminal offence, nor with a reasonable belief that they were in the public interest. It held that the dismissal was not caused by protected disclosures; it was caused by the claimant's blackmail attempt.

Had employee status existed, the tribunal said it would have found dismissal for misconduct and that the respondent had a genuine and reasonable belief, based on the recorded meetings and email, that the misconduct had happened. It relied on Burchell and section 98(4) ERA 1996, and held that the case was so stark that a separate disciplinary hearing was not required to make the dismissal fair. It further found that, even if a fair process had been required, the claimant would have been dismissed within about two weeks in any event under Polkey, and that any compensation would have been reduced by 100% for contributory fault. The tribunal also rejected the holiday pay, unlawful deduction, breach of contract / wrongful dismissal, and companion complaints on the basis that there was no worker or employee status and, in any event, no entitlement or request made out on the facts. No compensation or other merits award was made in this judgment, and the respondent's costs application was left for a later hearing.