Mr S Pirvu v Amazon UK Services Ltd: 1301425/2023
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Published date | 06 March 2025 |
| Court | Employment Tribunal |
| Citation | 1301425/2023 |
Case number: 1301425/2023
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EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL
Claimant: Mr S Pirvu
Respondent: Amazon UK Services Limited
Heard at: In person On: 05.08.2024 to 09.08.2024 and
18.11.2024 to 20.11.2024
Before: Employment Judge Mensah
Mrs J Keane
Mrs I Fox
Location: West Midlands Employment Tribunal
Appearances
For the claimant/s: In person
For the respondent: Ms Bowen (Counsel)
JUDGMENT
1. The Tribunal orders:
(i) The Claimant’s claims for Direct Age discrimination are not made out
and are dismissed.
(ii) The Claimant’s claims for Harassment are not made out and are
dismissed.
(iii) The Claimant’s claim for Victimisation is not made out and is
dismissed.
Background
2. The last Case Management hearing in this case came before Judge Faulkner
on the 19.07.2024. In the order covering that hearing the Judge addressed various
applications made by the Claimant regarding amendments to his claim and a witness
Case number: 1301425/2023
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order. By the end of the hearing the Judge had drawn up a List of issues which had
taken at least three Case Management hearing to be crafted and finalised with the
parties involved.
Interpreter
3. The Claimant was assisted throughout the hearing by a Romanian interpreter.
From our observations the Claimant understood the Interpreters and only once
questioned whether one of the Interpreters had accurately translated what he said
and when we checked there had been an accurate translation.
4. The interpreter, a handful of occasions, sought permission to ask the Claimant
to repeat himself but that was making sure he had heard what was said before he
translated. Whilst the Claimant used an Interpreter, we noted he also understood a
lot of English and at various times he would start to answer questions before the
interpreter had translated them and had to be told to wait for the translation. Further,
before he could be stopped, he sometimes answered the questions before it had
been translated.
5. At times he also asked to be given time to read a document which was in
English and confirmed he had read and understood the content. His witness
statement was in English, and he confirmed he had created it in English.
6. Overall, we found the Claimant was able to understand the questions being
put and engage in the process. We say this because his evidence took the best part
of two days of Tribunal time. Questions had to be repeated and sometimes were
repeated three or four times by Ms Bowen. We found through his evidence he
understood the questions, but at times chose not to answer the question asked, at
other times provided answers which went beyond the questions put and at other
times simply chose to repeat his previous answer.
Witnesses and timetable
7. On day one Mr Pirvu confirmed he had two witnesses. Ms Julie Ene who
speaks Romanian and Mrs Georgiana Vasiliu who also speaks Romanian. Ms
Bowen told us she had understood Mrs Vasiliu said Italian is her first language. Later
this was clarified and Mr Pirvu confirmed both his witnesses wanted a Romanian
interpreter. However, on day three of the hearing, the Claimant informed us Julie Ene
was not attending the hearing and so we took that statement as a hearsay statement
and confirmed we would consider it and give it the appropriate weight.
8. Ms Bowen confirmed two of her witnesses, Mr Hayden Ball and Claire
Wiltshire were not being called to give evidence as they no longer work for the
Respondent and were not able to give evidence this week. Ms Bowen relied upon
their statements as hearsay statements. In terms of her other witnesses, she
confirmed the order was Mr Thomas Shorrock, Mr Conner Bickley, Mr Adam Gilroy
and Ms Kieran Yates. In fact, we heard from Mr Yates first because we did not get to
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the Respondent’s evidence until the last day of the hearing, and this also happened
to be the last day of his employment.
9. With more witnesses than envisaged when the case was listed for five days
by the previous Judge in a case management hearing, it was agreed from the outset
we would concentrate on liability only. I explained, if we managed to get through the
evidence and submissions, we would likely have to set another day for the Tribunal
to deliberate and have the parties return for oral judgment on the second day.
10. We agreed to interpose Mr Kirby as he was due to go on holiday and leave
the Respondent business. We agreed this on day one and gave the Claimant notice
he would therefore be required to cross-examine Mr Kirby the next day and if he had
not already prepared his questions, he should make sure he is ready. We interposed
him on day two of the first five days. The Claimant’s evidence took much longer than
first suggested to us. Therefore, his cross-examination was not completed until the
end of day four. We heard evidence from Mrs Vasiliu on the morning of Day five and
the Claimant completed his cross-examination of Mr Yates and so we also completed
any questions from the panel and re-examination. We discussed the timetable, and it
was agreed we would return for another three days to complete the remaining three
Respondent witnesses, submissions, deliberations and oral judgment.
11. The parties agreed this would be enough time. We again reiterated the role of
the Claimant to prepare for his questions of those witnesses and his submissions.
Miss Bowen confirmed the Respondent had sent to the Claimant their authorities
already. It was agreed to prevent the Claimant needing further time during the next
hearing to read the Respondent’s written submission, Miss Bowen indicated she
would be willing to disclose that to him before the next hearing, so he had ample
time to read it in advance and we ordered the same. We were grateful to Counsel for
this flexible approach which we felt was within the spirit of the overriding objective.
12. We fixed the return dates. By the time we reconvened, the Claimant had
applied for the Tribunal to recuse itself. We address this below. This took the whole
of the first reconvened day to hear from the parties and we indicated the parties we
would give our decision the morning of the second reconvened day. As it transpired
the Claimant did not attend on the second reconvened day and instead indicated he
would not return unless we recused ourselves. We have detailed all that happened
and our decisions below.
Documents
13. Most of the first day of the hearing and the first fifty minutes of the second day
were taken dealing with various preliminary matters including further documents
exchanged between the parties, which included in a supplemental bundle and further
documents emerging during the hearing.
14. In each event we had the parties address us on the relevance and timing of
the production and any prejudice. We agreed the supplemental bundle and a
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