no present or represented For the v Mr T Goslar, director — 2024

Adrian Stefan Stoica presented the claim on 26 June 2024, alleging unfair dismissal and unauthorised deduction from wages and seeking arrears of wages, holiday pay and notice pay. The final hearing took place on 6 December 2024 before Employment Judge P Klimov sitting alone; the claimant did not attend, while the respondent attended through Mr T Goslar.

The tribunal recorded a long series of emails and procedural exchanges in which the claimant used rude and abusive language, made threats, ignored directions and did not engage substantively with a strike-out warning. The judge held that the conduct of the proceedings was scandalous, unreasonable and vexatious within Rule 37(1)(b), that it amounted to an abuse of the tribunal process, and that striking out the claim was proportionate under the overriding objective. The judge also said no lesser sanction would be appropriate.

As alternative reasons, the judge said a fair trial was no longer possible in the allocated trial window because the claimant did not attend, and that the claim would in any event have been dismissed under Rule 47 for non-attendance. The judge also refused the claimant's very late postponement request because it did not disclose exceptional circumstances.

On the merits, which the tribunal addressed only in the alternative, the judge said the unfair dismissal complaint was always doomed to fail because the claimant had only five days' continuous service, so he could not satisfy the s.108 ERA 1996 qualifying period, and he would not have been entitled to statutory notice pay under s.86 ERA 1996. The judge further said the wage claim was of very low value, and that the claimant's documentary and video evidence would not have been enough without his explanation at a hearing.