Dr S Shah v The Redundancy Payment Service — 2024

The case was listed for a preliminary hearing to decide whether Dr S Shah was an employee of Articulate Finance Ltd, the insolvent company of which he was the sole director and shareholder. The tribunal said that if he was an employee he would be entitled to claim a redundancy payment from the respondent; if not, he would not be entitled to do so. Dr Shah did not attend the hearing.

The tribunal accepted that Dr Shah had emailed on 29 January 2024 saying that his representative had died and that he was due to undergo surgery for leg ulcers and vascular complications. It also noted that later correspondence, including the notice of hearing, had been sent to the late representative’s address rather than directly to Dr Shah, so he may initially have been unaware of the hearing date. However, the respondent had emailed him on 24 April 2024 at the address he had given on the claim form, told him there would be a hearing that day, and received no response. Joining instructions were also sent for the video hearing.

Applying rule 47 on non-attendance, the tribunal decided to dismiss the claim rather than attempt to decide the preliminary issue in Dr Shah’s absence. It considered that the issue could not fairly be determined without evidence from the claimant. It also decided that a postponement was not in the interests of justice because the case had been ongoing since early 2022, the hearing had already been postponed once, and the parties were entitled to a resolution without further delay.

The tribunal recorded that if Dr Shah had good reasons for not attending and for not informing the tribunal in advance, he could ask for the decision to be reconsidered, supported by evidence and explanation. No substantive finding was made on employee status or on entitlement to redundancy payment.