Employment Appeal Tribunal strikes out £670,000 claim against Lord Rami Ranger and Sun Mark

Lord Rami Ranger and his company Sun Mark Ltd has won a 6-year legal battle after the president of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, Dame Jennifer Eady, dismissed a case brought against him by a former employee, Ramandeep Kaur.

Kaur had claimed £673,000 from Sun Mark Ltd and Sea, Air and Land Forwarding Ltd and took her case to the country’s most senior employment judge.

After a hearing this month, Justice Eady 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”.

Justice Eady upheld a 2023 ruling by Judge Hyams that Kaur had deliberately frustrated the course of justice by destroying critical evidence to the case, including a phone used to record a conversation covertly with Lord Ranger in October 2018 after provoking him and a notebook in which she alleged to have kept details of some of the incidents.

Sun Mark commented that the credibility of the claimant was in doubt from the outset after the judge concluded in his findings of the liability hearing in 2020 that Kaur had a tendency to exaggerate matters and put a far more sinister interpretation on what happened.

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.

In her judgment, delivered on March 21, 2024, Justice Eady said Judge Hyams had established that Kaur had been dishonest in her conduct, lying about the evidence that had been destroyed and when it had been destroyed. He had rightly concluded that she had deliberately ensured the evidence could no longer be examined to avoid the credibility of her case being tested further.

On that basis, she concluded it was right to strike out the case. She agreed that a fair trial was impossible because Kaur destroyed the evidence, which meant the relevant evidence could not be investigated.

“Her actions (whether in destroying evidence or in lying about having done so) meant that relevant evidence could no longer be investigated, either to test whether it did support her case or to examine it to see whether it might weaken that case. The decision reached reflected the permissible findings of fact made and an entirely proper assessment as to whether there could still be a fair determination of the remaining aspects of the claim,” the judgment stated.

Commenting, Lord Ranger, chairman of Sun Mark Ltd, 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.”

Lord Ranger said the six-year legal battle has considerably affected his health, reputation, and Sun Mark’s businesses.

“Still, we were determined to fight it because we could not let our good name be tarnished unfairly, and our reputation undermined through duplicity and malice. We are very proud of how we run our businesses and take our responsibilities as employers very seriously,” he added.