A recent Court of Appeal case has determined that a British man working abroad for a British company cannot pursue his case in a UK employment tribunal, as his employment did not have sufficient connection with Britain for the tribunal to have jurisdiction.

Mr Hughes was attempting to pursue an unfair dismissal case against Alan Dick Co Ltd, an English company that had employed him to work in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. His entire period of employment was spent there.

An employment tribunal refused to hear his claim on the basis that it had no jurisdiction to do so. Mr Hughes appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, which made a similar decision. He then took his case to the Court of Appeal.

Once again, it was ruled that his case could not be heard. The Court of Appeal agreed that a UK employment tribunal did not have jurisdiction to consider his claim. They reached this conclusion by applying the House of Lords decision in Lawson v Serco 2006. Essentially, they found that the following factors were not enough to allow Mr Hughes’ case to be heard by a UK tribunal:

• His employer was based in England and that Mr Hughes was recruited in England.
• The business he worked for had a British owner and was a branch of a British business.
• He was paid in sterling into a UK bank account.
• The decision to dismiss him came from the UK.

Also, the fact that there was no remedy available to him under Nigerian law was deemed not to be relevant to the issue.

Throughout his time with Alan Dick Co Ltd, Mr Hughes lived and worked in Nigeria, where the company had a substantial business presence. Despite the fact that there were a number of factors linking the case to the UK, the ties to Nigeria were clearly far stronger, and so Mr Hughes was not entitled to claim for unfair dismissal.

Technorati Tags: Employment Tribunal, Tribunal Jurisdiction, Unfair Dismissal