A judge has ruled that a City firm’s redundancy process for dismissing a solicitor was ‘procedurally and substantively’ fair.

Employment Judge Burns, sitting in the London Central employment tribunal, dismissed the claim of unfair dismissal brought by Maria Davies against her former firm Squire Patton Boggs (UK) LLP.

Davies had been made redundant in November 2020 having been one of five associates in the London office of the firm’s international dispute resolution practice group.

The tribunal heard that by June 2020 the London-based partners decided they needed to make one redundancy from this pool of five, setting out eight criteria with which to judge each solicitor with a mark out of five.

Davies had worked almost exclusively for a substantial individual client, but this work had ended in February 2020 because of a failure to pay fees. Despite her billable hours having fallen in 2020 as a result, the marking partners awarded her top marks for this category as the client loss was not her fault and had previously worked an ‘abundance’ of chargeable hours. However, overall Davies’ total marks were the lowest of the five, and she was provisionally selected.

The firm held three consultation meetings and added another trainee solicitor, at Davies’ suggestion, to the pool who had been offered and accepted an associate contract. She was also informed about a possible alternative role in corporate tax based in Leeds or Manchester, which she declined. Her solicitors made a threat to issue tribunal proceedings but the firm did not change its mind. A subsequent appeal was also dismissed on paper.

The judge said there was a ‘genuine redundancy situation’ through a reduced need for employees. The firm made reasonable selection criteria which were unambiguous. The choice of scorers was found reasonable and the judge rejected any submission that the marking was biased, predetermined or other otherwise wrong.

He ruled there had been a strong business need to retain the services of one of Davies’ colleagues as she spoke Arabic and was seen as essential to the conclusion of a pending transaction in Qatar.

The judge rejected that Davies should have been separately warned before the consultation started and said the decision was not already made at this stage. He also dismissed the suggestion that Davies should have been placed on furlough instead of made redundant, as this scheme was to retain employees whose services were required, not to ‘artificially extend at tax-payer’s expense the service of redundant employees’.

 

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