Tribunal: All claims dismissed
A Yorkshire law firm did not fail to safeguard a member of staff from her ex-partner, who had become a disgruntled client, an employment tribunal has ruled.
LPS Solicitors in Bradford sent Tusswar Ali four ‘cease and desist’ letters and changed Ms A Shaheen’s work phone number in response to his abusive calls and emails.
Ms Shaheen worked for a decade at the firm to January 2024. She had no legal training and had learned on the job.
She had been in a relationship with Mr Ali that ended during lockdown but in May 2022 began acting for him on a matter.
“The fact that [she] was acting for Mr Ali does not appear to be a problem until sometime later, in 2022,” Employment Judge Singh in Leeds recorded.
In August 2022, Mr Ali attempted but failed to break into the firm’s offices. LPS reassured Ms Shaheen about its security measures.
It was not clear, the tribunal went on, why neither the firm nor Ms Shaheen identified a potential conflict in her continuing to act for Mr Ali. The “only conclusion” was that Ms Shaheen had not told the firm he was also a client.
Mr Ali’s claim was concluded in September 2022 and he was awarded some monies. The situation then “became more acrimonious” over what Mr Ali said Ms Shaheen paying the last of instalments to the wrong account.
The firm rejected Mr Ali’s complaint (he also complained to the Solicitors Regulation Authority) and he then began to send more abusive emails to Ms Shaheen and others at the firm, followed by phone calls.
The tribunal rejected Ms Shaheen’s argument that LPS could have done more to protect her from this.
“We do not consider that it was reasonable or practicable for [LPS] to block Mr Ali’s emails. They needed to see them because of the ongoing matters relating to his allegation against the firm and Mr Ali or others would have kept creating email addresses to subvert any block.
“It was also not practicable or reasonable to create a new work email address for the claimant… It was necessary to keep her old email address active to ensure that work related emails were not being lost.
“We accept it was not reasonable to appoint someone to manage and monitor this email address.”
At the same time, the firm wrote to Mr Ali four times with “cease and desist” letters asking him to stop communicating with them as he had been doing, changed her phone number and had not shown Ms Shaheen emails he sent to others.
“The claimant agreed she was already ignoring the many emails from Mr Ali to her personal email address. We consider it would have been possible for her to do the same and not read the ones from Mr Ali going to her work email address.
“As such, we do not consider the respondents’ actions to amount to a breach of trust and confidence in relation to the emails.”
Judge Singh also rejected Ms Shaheen’s complaint about her safety at work and particularly whether an emergency exit was accessible, preferring the evidence of colleagues that said it was.
It found that Ms Shaheen had resigned and that a partner who reacted angrily to her claim for £8,000 in commission for Mr Ali’s work did not then dismiss her.
“He only told her to leave his room. He also placed her on garden leave by telling her that there was no need to return in January. Had the claimant believed she had been dismissed in that meeting, we find it more likely than not that she would not have stayed for the handover of her files.”
All Ms Shaheen’s other complaints against LPS Solicitors were dismissed too.
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