ETZ 4(WR) IN THE EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL (SCOTLAND) AT EDINBURGH Judgment of the Employment Tribunal in Case No: 8002112/2024 Heard at Edinburgh on 10, 11, and November 2025 Employment Judge J G d’Inverno Mr M Sfeir v Margiotta Ltd First Named and 1 other — 2025

The claimant worked for Margiotta Ltd as a delivery driver from 23 August 2023 until his employment ended on 17 July 2024 after one week’s notice was given at a meeting on 10 July 2024. The tribunal found that he had been subject to a performance improvement process in April 2024 and that, when he was asked to sign a company Group Read and Sign Notice, he was not singled out from other drivers because the notice applied to all drivers and had already been signed by others. The tribunal held that the protected disclosures relied on on 15 April, 23 May and 23 April were qualifying protected disclosures, but it did not accept the alleged 3 April disclosure as having been heard or understood by David Broadbent, and it found that the 27 June WhatsApp exchange and the 10 July remark after dismissal did not amount to protected disclosures.

On the dismissal claim, the tribunal found that neither David Broadbent nor Sheree King knew of the claimant’s protected disclosures before the decision to dismiss was taken. It accepted the contemporaneous minute of the 10 July meeting and found that the reason for dismissal was the claimant’s conduct: he repeatedly refused to comply with his supervisor’s request and direction that he take his break, argued with a senior supervisor about the loading order of the van, and adopted an argumentative and confrontational approach in the meeting with Broadbent. The tribunal held that the claimant had not proved that the reason, or principal reason, for dismissal was that he had made a protected disclosure, so the section 103A automatic unfair dismissal complaint failed.

On the section 47B detriment complaints, the tribunal rejected most of the alleged detriments as unproven or not amounting to detriments for statutory purposes. It found that the complaints about being ignored, being spoken to harshly or gruffly, being accused of being too slow, and being asked to sign the group notice did not succeed. It did find that the 10 July meeting called without prior notice and without an opportunity to be accompanied was a detriment, and that Sheree King’s failure to progress the appeal was also a detriment in fact. However, it held that those matters were not done on the ground that the claimant had made protected disclosures; the failure to progress the appeal was because King believed the grounds of appeal contained a false account of the dismissal meeting and she wanted to consult her reporting director before acting.

No remedy was awarded because all complaints failed. The tribunal noted, for completeness, that the claimant secured new employment within five weeks of dismissal and that, if liability had succeeded, it would not have awarded future loss beyond the point at which he decided to remain in that new role.