Mishcon: Caused unnecessary costs
A judge has dismissed a claim from a solicitor apprentice who showed “utter disrespect, bordering on contempt” to an employment tribunal and her former employer, London law firm Mishcon de Reya.
Employment Judge Klimov said Forzana Khanom had shown “persistent, long-lasting and egregious disregard” of the tribunal’s orders and given “feeble and frankly scarcely credible explanations”.
The employment tribunal heard that Ms Khanom presented her claim, the nature of which was not specified, against Mishcon de Reya in November 2022.
Following a case management hearing in August 2023, she failed to provide medical evidence of an alleged disability or disclose documents by the deadlines set out in the orders made at the hearing, despite being “repeatedly chased” by Mishcon.
The firm applied for an unless order in November 2023 and further orders were made by Judge Woodhead in December, with which Ms Khanom also failed to comply.
Mishcon applied to have the claim struck out and Judge Woodhead made a second set of orders in January 2024.
Ms Khanom gave her reasons for the non-compliance later that month. She “partly blamed her former solicitors (who had come off record on 6 December 2023), partly her ill health (side effects of medication), and partly technical problems with her laptop”.
Judge Klimov said he found these reasons “wholly unpersuasive and insufficient to excuse the claimant’s repeated and continued failure to abide by the tribunal orders”.
Ms Khanom told the tribunal she was “willing to comply”, was in the process of seeking legal representation, and “wish[ed] to proceed with the hearing”.
Regional Employment Judge Freer decided, at the end of February 2024, to vacate the final hearing and convert the first day into a case management hearing by video.
Ms Khanom emailed at 9.35am on the day to say she would not be attending because she was about to board a plane to go on a family holiday for her birthday.
Judge Klimov said this was “completely unsatisfactory”. If the preliminary hearing had been in public, he would not have hesitated to strike out the claim, since it was a “prime example of when the tribunal not only can but should exercise its strike out powers”.
He said Ms Khanom’s “persistent, long-lasting and egregious disregard of the tribunal’s orders and her failure to engage with the process [showed] a complete and utter disrespect to the respondent and the tribunal, bordering on contempt”.
She had caused Mischcon he Reya to incur “substantial and unnecessary costs” and took “a wholly disproportionate time” from the tribunal’s limited resources, “with at least six employment judges having to deal with her case at various stages”.
Judge Klimov said: “The claimant is an apprentice-solicitor. It appears she aspires to join this profession. Therefore, she would (or at any rate – should) be aware of the importance to follow due legal process, and how she should conduct herself towards her opponent and the tribunal.
“Her conduct of this case demonstrates the opposite of what could be expected of someone in her position.”
The judge said it would be “disproportionate and contrary to the overriding objective to list a further hearing, or to issue new case management orders”, which he had “no confidence” the claimant would comply with.
Instead, he dismissed Ms Khanom’s claim for non-attendance at the hearing.
Counsel for Mishcon de Reya said the firm would be seeking a costs order.