Originally Posted by
SECsmachine
Quote from the tribunal:
Not a wild rumour - the report says he was claiming this under disability discrimination legislation; when this was disallowed, he tried to seek reemployment - that would permit claiming backpay. Tribunal did not agree to enforce a re-employment order.
...with all due respect (I know - I hate that phrase too!), but you are slightly wayward in your interpretation of events and the ET procedures in such claims.
Captain Lawson primarily sought to clear his name of a wrongful assertion of him being an unsafe pilot. He succeeded.
He also sought reinstatement
from the very first moment of filing his claim at the ET, not, as you suggest, after any failed disability claim. He was prevented from being reinstated (after the airline admitted liability for unfair dismissal) at the remedy hearing. This because the company argued it was impractical for them to re-employ him due to the litigation having gone so far and all trust between parties had broken down, and therefore it should not be viable for the Judge to order it. Therefore the Judge ruled accordingly.
A schedule of loss is just that - an account of your
actual losses you have suffered as a result of the detriment occuring as demonstrated to the Tribunal. In fact, it is the Tribunal that orders that a claimant must supply the schedule of loss. Those losses increase as the time passes during the litigation, as you identified. But any final compensation awarded is done so according to any statutory caps governing allowable award, and also with an eye on the amount of losses that are
demonstrated in the schedule of loss. Hence Captain Lawson got awarded the maximum amount that the Judge was permitted to award due to a statutory cap. His demonstrated losses were far in excess of what the aplicable statutory cap permitted that he could be awarded. The airline tried to argue the award down, even at this stage, but the Judge declined their arguments. He won the maximum compensation he could have been awarded for unfair dismissal.
The wild rumours I refered to were with respect to the continuing inferences within the airline workforce at the time that Captain Lawson was demanding/had even been given a VAA settlement figure of many millions. Those acolytes still prefer to claim that Captain Lawson "lost" and the airline "won" on this basis.
I hope that helps interested readers. It is a sobering vindication story indeed, and one very worthy of your time to read the 60 pages.
As to naming names of those involved in the more recent ongoing events, that is best left for personal pondering personal conclusions. Nobody wants to be joining them in the High Court defamation away day!