Ms Sarah Wayman v Super-Max Limited — 2025

Employment Judge A. Beale KC, sitting alone at London South on 3 June 2025, upheld Ms Wayman's claims for unauthorised deductions from wages, accrued but untaken holiday pay and breach of contract (notice pay). The claimant had been employed by Super-Max Limited since 1 September 1998, latterly as a Vice President, and resigned on 14 August 2024 after not being paid her salary from 1 January 2024 onwards. The tribunal accepted that she remained available to the respondent and continued to carry out what work she could, and noted that the respondent had not taken any disciplinary action or sought to vary her contract during the unpaid period.

At the outset of the hearing the judge refused the respondent's applications to take evidence by video from two witnesses based in the UAE, and to postpone the hearing. Applying Agbabiaka (Evidence from Abroad) [2021] UKUT 286 and the Presidential Guidance dated 17 January 2025, the judge found that the respondent had not demonstrated the absence of a legal or diplomatic barrier to taking evidence from the UAE, and that an affidavit from a single UAE lawyer connected to the respondent was insufficient.

On the merits, the judge found that the respondent's failure to pay the claimant for almost eight months was a fundamental and repudiatory breach of contract entitling her to resign without working her notice, so the respondent had constructively dismissed her and notice pay was due. An argument that the claimant had herself committed a repudiatory breach by paying herself but not Miss Murtaza in November 2023 was rejected: the judge found the conduct did not amount to a repudiatory breach and, in any event, had been waived by the respondent. The tribunal ordered net payments of GBP 41,286.67 (arrears of wages), GBP 3,966.70 (holiday pay) and GBP 15,354.96 (notice pay).