Miss A Collins v MM! The Party Limited — 2023

Miss A Collins was employed by MM! The Party Limited as a company manager from 5 December 2021 to 24 February 2022. She originally presented her case as unfair dismissal, but later said she had not intended to pursue that claim and sought to characterise the matter as breach of contract or wrongful dismissal. The tribunal found that the unfair dismissal claim could not proceed because she did not have the required two years' continuity of service.

The tribunal accepted that any attempt to reframe the case as breach of contract would require a formal amendment. It held that the proposed amendment would be a new claim and was substantially out of time. Applying the strike-out and amendment principles it had set out, the tribunal concluded that there was no reasonable prospect of success in the proposed claim and refused to allow the amendment.

The tribunal also recorded that, even if the matter were approached as a notice-pay claim, the respondent had already paid the claimant eight weeks' notice and the contractual notice period was not less than two weeks. The formal judgment therefore struck out the unfair dismissal claim and no monetary award was made.