A MAN who made unsuccessful claims at an Employment Tribunal has to pay back his former employer £76 after it emerged that he had added up his holiday pay wrongly.
Mihai Sandru had taken Courtyard Holdings Ltd to the tribunal, claiming that they were wrong to dismiss him summarily because he failed to turn up to work, taking holiday without the authorisation required in his contract.
However, the tribunal said that it found that Mr Sandru’s evidence was ‘simply not capable of being believed’. Tribunal deputy chairman Advocate Ian Jones noted that Mr Sandru had accepted in his evidence that he had lied to his employer when he made a holiday request that was not submitted and that he lied at the tribunal about the detail of his holiday.
‘Perhaps of more concern,’ continued Advocate Jones, ‘is that it also seems to me clear that Mr Sandru perpetuated those lies in his sworn witness statement intended to be adduced as his evidence at the final hearing, and he then sought to maintain those (now admitted) lies before the tribunal during the final hearing. He eventually conceded that he wasn’t telling the truth following questioning from the tribunal at the conclusion of his evidence.
‘In those circumstances I find that these untruths inevitably taint all of Mr Sandru’s evidence to the extent it was contested by the respondent, and I was ultimately unable to accept any of the evidence that Mr Sandru gave about the other material aspects of the case (where they were not agreed) or the attendant circumstances,’ Advocate Jones said.
Mr Sandru also claimed he was owed £228 in relation to unpaid holiday pay but this was contested by the company, which said that Mr Sandru had been overpaid.
In judgment, Advocate Jones said: ‘When Mr Le Cornu [who represented Mr Sandru] was taking me through the substance of the holiday pay claim, Mr Le Cornu realised and accepted that he had made an arithmetical mistake and indeed it was correct that not only was Mr Sandru not owed any money by the respondent but in fact it was correct that Mr Sandru owed Courtyard Holdings money in relation to holiday pay. It follows that the counterclaim as submitted by Courtyard Holdings succeeded and I therefore ordered that Mr Sandru pay Courtyard Holdings the sum of £76’.
