Ms A had contacted the CLA legal advice line as she had not been able to get representation elsewhere.
Ms A was a 65-year-old woman who had been dismissed after many years loyal service under the pretence of redundancy.
She had brought a claim in the Employment Tribunal herself for unfair dismissal and had struggled to get the matter prepared for the final hearing which was only weeks away. Her claim was against a large multinational group, which is one of the top 500 largest companies in the world.
All the way throughout her dismissal and the subsequent Tribunal proceedings she had been put under lots of pressure to withdraw her claim and she was continually told by the former employer’s representative that she 'would never win her case'. She knew in herself that the way she had been treated was just not right and when we spoke to her she was concerned that she would be wasting everyone’s time.
Ms A sent what documents she had to us and we spoke to her over the telephone to take full details from her. We were able to fully consider her case and we believed that this was a sham redundancy situation and that she had clear grounds to bring a claim for unfair dismissal. We also identified that she had grounds to bring a claim for age discrimination, a claim which she had not brought when issuing the claim herself. We promptly made an application to the Employment to have this new claim included even though it was time barred.
We prepared the case for the final hearing, which included a full calculation of her losses (something which she basically did not know about), the preparation of the bundle of documents and her detailed witness statement. The day before the hearing the other side relented and we negotiated a financial settlement for Ms A which she was very happy with. Ms A avoided the need to face her former employer in the Tribunal, something which she was understandably very nervous about. She informed us that she was gong to spend some of the money by going on a month long trip to visit a relative in Australia and taking her niece with her.
