Mr R Botha v Blue Crocodile Money Ltd: 1801644/2024 and 1801646/2024
JUDGMENT
The claimant’s application dated 21 April 2025 for reconsideration of the judgment sent to the parties on 7 April 2025 is refused.REASONS
There is no reasonable prospect of the original decision being varied or revoked. A judgment can be reconsidered if in the interests of justice to do so. When the basis of the application is new evidence unavailable at the original hearing, the tribunal will consider whether the evidence could not have been obtained with reasonable diligence for use at the original hearing, whether the evidence is relevant and would probably have had an important influence on the hearing and whether it is apparently credible. The tribunal at the final hearing had before it a bundle of documents containing some 902 pages. The parties referred to only a fraction of those documents. Those documents included a substantial number of screenshots of messages sent between the claimant and the owner directors of the respondent. The claimant maintains that an unlocking of his Apple account has resulted in him locating an additional 130 pages of documentation which have been submitted for the tribunal’s consideration. There is no explanation as to why this unlocking might not have been achieved at an earlier date prior to the final hearing or why it was not raised at the final hearing by the claimant that there was documentation relevant to the issues which had been unable to obtain. Given the vast number of screen shotted messages already within the bundle, the tribunal is sceptical that the simple unlocking of an Apple account has produced these further disclosures. It is not generally in the interests of justice to allow a party in litigation a second bite at the cherry, just because they failed to adduce all the evidence the first time round. The additional documentation relied upon falls within a number of categories, is not all materially relevant to the issues and has been provided in a manner which lacks focus. The majority appears simply to show the claimant active as a mortgage adviser throughout his employment which is not in dispute and not relevant directly to any change in the payment arrangements implemented during his employment with the respondent. It does not demonstrate that the claimant was not involved in other activities or that his terms and conditions were unchanged. The claimant would say, potentially with justification, that it shows him to be a high performer, but not such as might cause the tribunal to reach a different conclusion on the issues before it. The tribunal has reviewed the documentation and notes that there is a message from Mr Harry Blakey to the claimant saying that he is not sure if the claimant’s wife “is in”. This appears to have been sent around 25 November 2021, before the claimant suggests that his wife provided any services to the respondent and before she invoiced for any. There is then a message from Harry Blakey asking the claimant for his wife’s bank details on 21 May 2022. However, this is consistent with the claimant, as was found, having forwarded to Mr Blakey invoices in his wife’s name with her bank details and Mr Blakey, on the face of it, having had a difficulty in making a bank transfer to the account details provided. It is not evidence of the claimant’s wife having done any work within the business. A further message dated 1 September 2022 notes a request to the claimant to produce an invoice from the claimant’s wife in the sum of £3000. Without evidence as to context, this takes the claimant’s case no further forward. Additional payments were made in an irregular manner in terms of the claimant’s own tax liability and the tribunal has found that the amounts invoiced appeared quite arbitrary and contrived. They were not sums alighted upon by Mr Blakey based on work he believed the claimant’s wife had done. This evidence does not in itself point to a contrary conclusion. The claimant refers to a text message on 18 August 2022 were Harry Blakey “accurately confirmed commission” owed to the claimant a significant period after he had supposedly opted out of the commission scheme. This is said to relate to documents before the tribunal at the final hearing, but these documents were not referred to by the claimant in his evidence. There is no evidence that this payment was requested or expected by the claimant. It is not probative of a lack of change of the arrangements for the payment of remuneration to the claimant. A transcript included of a meeting with the directors reflects a conflation of “discretionary bonus” with “commission”. The documents do not indicate that the claimant was seeking a particular sum in accordance with an ongoing commission scheme. The claimant refers to laptops purchased by the respondent for the claimant’s wife and mother in law. This was not a point made by the claimant at the final hearing and it could have been regardless of any documentation said to be in support of that. The documentation does not straightforwardly show what the claimant suggests it shows. The tribunal explained to the parties in its oral judgment that it did not consider that it had heard from anyone a full and accurate account of the arrangements surrounding the claimant’s employment. It had in the circumstances to make an assessment on the evidence before it on the basis of the balance of probabilities. The new documents on balance will not bring any new clarity to arrangements which were opaque and irregular between the parties.