Mr J Oxley v Terry Group Limited — 2022

This was a reconsideration judgment following the tribunal’s written decision sent on 15 February 2022. At the final hearing on 11 February 2022, the tribunal had been dealing with allegations of unauthorised deductions from wages, including sick pay, holiday pay and furlough pay. When asked about the alleged deduction from September 2020 sick pay, the claimant said he was not pursuing it.

The tribunal decided that the respondent had made a series of unauthorised deductions from the claimant’s furlough pay, but it declined to order the respondent to make any payment because the respondent had already paid all of the unlawfully deducted wages. It dismissed the remainder of the claim, including the September sick pay allegation, on the basis that it understood that part to have been withdrawn.

The claimant then applied for reconsideration on 27 February 2022, seeking an order for payment of £1,168.00 as compensation for loss of earnings said to have been caused by the unlawful deductions from furlough pay. The tribunal accepted that there was an arguable point about whether the September sick pay allegation had been clearly withdrawn, but held that the application would fail in any event.

Applying rule 70 and rule 72 of the Employment Tribunal Rules of Procedure 2013, and taking account of the finality of litigation and the Ladd v Marshall criteria, the tribunal held there was no reasonable prospect of varying the original judgment. It concluded that section 24(2) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 did not extend to the claimed loss of earnings caused by illness, and in any event there was no medical evidence capable of establishing that the unlawful deductions caused the claimant to be unable to work. The reconsideration application was therefore refused.