Employment Tribunal has jurisdiction to hear claims against overseas individuals

In Prahl & Ors v Lapinski, the Claimant was a member of a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP). He made a claim of discrimination against the LLP and a number of individuals, including three individuals who were domiciled in Sweden.

It was agreed that the Tribunal had jurisdiction to deal with the Claimant’s claims of discrimination against the LLP, but the issue was whether it could deal with claims against the individual respondents based in Sweden.

Those respondents argued that the Tribunal did not have jurisdiction and could not therefore deal with claims against them, because:

• They are Swedish nationals who live and are domiciled in Sweden
• They were not present in the UK at the time the claim was issued or served
• The claim was not served personally on them in the UK
• The claim was not sent by post to an address in the UK at which they were present
• They had not submitted to the jurisdiction of the Tribunal

The Employment Tribunal and then the Employment Appeal Tribunal rejected these arguments. 

They did not agree with technical arguments put forward by the Swedish Respondents that the position of the Claimant as an LLP member was different to that of an employee. The rules that had been put into place post-Brexit to deal with claims against employers based abroad referred to “an employer” being sued by “an employee”. The EAT considered that the previous rules that were in place were designed to permit workers in the UK to enforce their employment rights and that whilst the rules that had been passed in order to continue this position post-Brexit referenced only “employee” and “employer”, they should be interpreted purposively – they were introduced to ensure that UK employees were in no worse position post-Brexit in terms of enforcing their rights against employers based overseas and this should include claims against individual respondents overseas. The Claimant had complied with the rules of the Employment Tribunal in terms of presenting his claim and the Employment Tribunal had complied with its rules in serving the claims on the Swedish respondents at the address given to it. On that basis, the claim could continue.

This case does not change the law, but is a useful reminder that:

• Claims for discrimination can be made against individual respondents
• Claims can be made by UK workers against employers based overseas
• Claims can be made by UK workers against individual respondents based overseas