An Indian woman who has never been to the United Kingdom and was refused a visa to visit the UK attempted to sue Air India in a British employment tribunal because she might have spent some time in the country during work layovers as a flight attendant.
The tribunal in Watford was told that the woman had passed initial recruitment assessments and been offered a job as a cabin crew member with Air India, but the job offer was withdrawn before she could start her training.
The woman claims that the job offer was withdrawn unfairly because of a whistleblowing complaint. The employment tribunal was set to look at complaints of discrimination and a breach of contract.
Interestingly, however, there was never any suggestion that the woman would have been based in the UK during her employment or employed under British law.
In fact, the woman would have been based in India and paid in Rupees but during the recruitment process, she was told that she would spend some time in the UK during work layovers.
Despite the woman’s very tenuous connection with the UK, the employment tribunal still went into great detail to determine whether it had jurisdiction to hear her case.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, the tribunal ruled that the claim had the “most minimal connection with British law and in fact, the connection with British law was only ever potential.”
“By far the stronger connection and in reality the only connection was with Indian law. On that basis, in my judgment the claim has no reasonable prospect of success,” the ruling continued.
The tribunal did, though, conclude that it could have heard the contract claim but eventually decided that an Indian court would be best placed to listen to the woman’s complaints.
Matt’s take
This is certainly an interesting case and it seems as if the woman felt like British employment law would be favourable to her case than Indian employment. That being said, her connection with the UK was incredibly weak and it’s perhaps little surprise that the British court rebuffed her claim.
That being said, I’m impressed by how much effort the court put into assessing the woman’s right to sue in a British court and the amount of detail it put into explaining why the matter should be heard in India.
