ASIAN businessman and peer Lord Rami Ranger has seen claims of discrimination made against his companies by a former employee dismissed by an employment tribunal last Thursday (21).
Ramandeep Kaur claimed £673,000 from Sun Mark Ltd and Sea, Air and Land Forwarding Ltd, taking her case to the president of the employment appeal tribunal, Dame Jennifer Eady.
However, the country’s most senior employment judge ruled in favour of the two companies and its founder, Lord Ranger, and chief executive, Harmeet Singh Ahuja, upholding a previous ruling that Kaur’s conduct was “scandalous, unreasonable and vexatious”.
In the liability hearing in 2020, the court found the claimant had a tendency to “exaggerate matters” and “put a far more sinister interpretation on what happened”.
Judge Hyams had said at the time that Kaur had deliberately destroyed critical evidence to the case, including a phone used to record a conversation covertly with Lord Ranger in October 2018, after provoking him, as well as a notebook in which she alleged to have kept details of some of the incidents.
Kaur repeatedly refused to allow the phone and notebook to be examined by Sun Mark’s legal representatives to establish that she provoked Lord Ranger to say what he said before finally admitting in October 2022 that she had destroyed the evidence on which aspects of the case hinged.
Dame Eady said judge Hyams had established that Kaur had been dishonest in her conduct, lying about the evidence that had been destroyed.
The court had rightly concluded that Kaur had deliberately ensured the evidence could no longer be examined to avoid the credibility of her case being tested further.
On that basis, Dame Eady concluded it was right to strike out the case, ending the matter.
The ruling brings to an end a six-year legal battle for Lord Ranger.
He said: “We are delighted that the most senior employment tribunal judge in the land has ruled in our favour and that Ms Kaur’s appeal against the strike out of her case has been dismissed. We have always argued that the employment tribunal system should deter anyone who believes they can abuse our legal system by behaving dishonestly or bringing false claims.”
