Tribunal finds against Judds

A former design production controller at the now-defunct Judds was wrongly dismissed before the graphics group went into receivership, an industrial tribunal has ruled.

Sam Shahir, now creative services manager at Design In Action, won his case last Friday after no-one turned up to mount a defence at a hearing in Croydon.

The tribunal quizzed Shahir on the circumstances of his redundancy before ruling in his favour.

Shahir worked for almost three years at DJPA International – as Judds was known prior to a name change in 1994. Shahir says he and two other design controllers were made redundant during September and October 1993.

Shahir claims that the then DJPA took on a production manager four days before the trio received notice of their redundancies. Shahir’s case rested on the claim that the job could have been done by Shahir himself.

Shahir says he got the job at DIA shortly after being made redundant, but he wanted to bring the tribunal case “for the principle”. “Theoretically, the tribunal could make an order for compensation, but there is no money as Judds has gone bust,” he says.

Jasper Judd, who was managing director at Judds before it crashed with ú1m debts, says Judds was going to defend the case “extremely vigorously” but the receivership meant there was “no point” in doing so.

“It was a pragmatic decision not to waste time on something that wasn’t going to be of benefit to anyone,” he says.