Settle or Tribunal? Evidence destroyed!

steampowered

I don't follow the details of your story.

None of the background matters if your claim is out of time. The Tribunal won't even consider the merits of your case if your claim is out of time. The time limits are there and they are strict.

If you are owed redundancy pay, you can potentially claim for that through the courts - where the time limit is 6 years. I would have thought 20 years worth of statutory redundancy pay would be quite a tidy sum.

You can't claim unfair dismissal through the courts though.

Undervalued

steampowered wrote: »

I don't follow the details of your story.

None of the background matters if your claim is out of time. The Tribunal won't even consider the merits of your case if your claim is out of time. The time limits are there and they are strict.

If you are owed redundancy pay, you can potentially claim for that through the courts - where the time limit is 6 years. I would have thought 20 years worth of statutory redundancy pay would be quite a tidy sum.

You can't claim unfair dismissal through the courts though.

The OP has said that they have been led to believe that their's may be one of the rare cases where the time limit would be waived.

However unless or until a judge rules on that they will never know. It doesn't happen often though!

sangie595

skayes wrote: »

Undervalued, thanks for letting me know. I appreciate it.

Sangie595, sorry you've had problems with fake newbies. I can understand your wariness about my post but I assure you mine is a genuine situation.

Unfortunately that is what this person says every single time. On both sites that they have done it on!

But I think that you fail to appreciate that whilst both sides have to share evidence (and actually, that is true of criminal proceedings too!) the gap in time acts against you. It would be far more questionable if evidence was destroyed in the first three months - any employer openly admitting to destroying evidence in that period of time would certainly have some serious questions to answer, not least of which being why they are so stupid. But several months later, the employer was perhaps hasty, but not overly so, and given that no tribunal proceedings had started, then it is much more explicable. So whatever evidence that you say you had initially wasn't enough to convince you that you had a case to lodge - and that is the point that I was making. On that basis, evidence that no longer exists at this point in time does not improve your case because its disposal is explicable. Had you put in a claim before the deadline and then the evidence you wanted was destroyed, that would be a great smoking gun. Right now it is indicative of nothing.

But I still do not see an argument - you thought your redundancy was fair because you hadn't passed the tests, but what you say is that you had now found out that you passed some of them. So what makes a difference. They were making redundancies and cuts anyway, it sounds like you were not the only person, and you were not fully qualified anyhow. You still sound like an ideal candidate for redundancy. Why do you think that you were not? To be honest, given your length of service, the cost of redundancy would have been cheaper elsewhere, and you would be gone soon anyway. If I wanted to be unfair about it, I'd pick someone cheaper!

But if you want to settle, you have to make some sort of offer to the employer. Given your redundancy and allowances for benefits; that isn't going to amount to very much. With a spectacularly great case, we would generally expect to only clear 6 - 9 months wages. We'd be talking landmark cases to get 12 months, and those are very rare. Assume 9 months, deduct what you would lose from the payments of benefits and redundancy pay - what is left? Because around that figure is a more realistic starting point. And they will, if they are like most employers, haggle over that figure, even if they might consider it.

What would that figure be?

sangie595

Undervalued wrote: »

The OP has said that they have been led to believe that their's may be one of the rare cases where the time limit would be waived.

However unless or until a judge rules on that they will never know. It doesn't happen often though!

I agree. And I didn't see anything in the OP that suggests that they had just cause for the delay. I still don't. In the employers shoes I wouldn't be even considering a settlement before a preliminary hearing, because that hearing will probably find in their favour and it all goes away. If the settlement offer is low enough, they may consider it just to save time and money. But I doubt more than that.

sangie595

steampowered wrote: »

I don't follow the details of your story.

None of the background matters if your claim is out of time. The Tribunal won't even consider the merits of your case if your claim is out of time. The time limits are there and they are strict.

If you are owed redundancy pay, you can potentially claim for that through the courts - where the time limit is 6 years. I would have thought 20 years worth of statutory redundancy pay would be quite a tidy sum.

You can't claim unfair dismissal through the courts though.

I don't think they are owed redundancy pay though. I think the claim is purely unfair dismissal / unfair selection.

nicechap

Was your redundancy voluntary or compulsary?

How much redundancy pay did you accept? (in Months or Weeks terms, not £ value).

Was the calculation based on your salary employed as a "skilled" worker or some other metric?

Were other colleagues paid redundancy on the same basis?

What is your rationale for the redundancy being unfair?

skayes

Whoa. I thought I'd already had advice I needed and the thread was probably over, but now see more replies!

you thought your redundancy was fair because you hadn't passed the tests, but what you say is that you had now found out that you passed some of them. So what makes a difference.

The observation several of you make about the case being out of time is right, and to reiterate, at the time I did accept my lack of qualifications (albeit reluctantly) and it was only much later that I discovered I did pass some tests. I went to Tribunal at this point because I suspected that I was kept in the dark about my test results so I wouldn't dispute them. They were probably worried that since I had passed some tests (by 'some' I mean I passed two out of three major tests), I might insist on re-testing to try and get the third passed on a second try as per standard procedure. It would also have made it harder for my employer to insist on letting me go (it was a compulsory redundancy).

You have all mentioned that the story is confusing. It's been confusing to me too, because I still don't fully understand - beyond what I have just mentioned - why they never told me the truth about the tests. If they'd just been upfront with me I wouldn't have taken it this far now. I think I also caused confusion here with my earlier posts because I brought in information that applied after the preliminary hearing, esp. the insurance issue, so sorry about that.

But after talking to a solicitor yes I know that even with my wage slips that validate my version of events, I don't have enough to swing the judgement in my favour, because fact remains that cutbacks were being made and redundancy was part of that. And to answer your questions, I was not the only one made redundant, and I did receive the maximum redundancy pay based on length of service.

In the end I know that I was subjected to unfair treatment before and during my notice period, but unfortunately I found out about the testing problem too late, and as I said I'm now too tired of the whole mess to gamble on the outcome of the preliminary hearing.

Thank you all again for your thoughts. If nothing else it has helped me review the case again and helped me with my final decision. If anything changes I'll post an update here, since I feel I owe you that, but otherwise, I think I will withdraw, since I doubt it's even worth trying to cut a deal outside of court for the minor wage shortfall. I would even have settled for a written admission that they were not upfront with me. But never mind.

sangie595

If you have little to win, and are fed up of it (and I get that - even people with great cases get to feel that way.) then wait for the preliminary, and if you lose, you walk away. Dropping it now makes little sense if that breathing is so close.

Believe it or not, I've heard plenty of people who won good settlements say that given what they now know, they'd never do it again even after winning! Tribunals are a nightmare for claimants. And those are the ones that have representation!

skayes

Fair point, thanks. Well, I'm still not in the frame of mind to go through with the hearing but I'll think about it over the weekend.

steampowered

Based on the limited information posted, I think you should try to agree a 'no costs' withdrawal with the employer now rather than go to the hearing.

I haven't heard anything in this thread which suggests to me that you had a good reason for making a claim out of time.

If the Tribunal agrees and strikes out your claim, there is a chance that you will be ordered to pay the employer's legal costs.