Company fails in its bid to flip a costs award against a former migrant worker it underpaid for months
A nail salon company has been ordered to pay $8,600 in legal costs to a former employee after the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) rejected its bid to have costs awarded in its own favour, ruling that the applicant's partial success was sufficient to entitle him to a costs contribution.
ERA Member Claire English applied the Authority's standard daily tariff, $4,500 for the first hearing day and $3,500 for each subsequent day, arriving at $8,600 for the investigation meeting in the case of A v B.
The employer argued that costs should not be awarded to the applicant at all, and that it should instead receive costs, on the basis that the applicant had failed to make out his personal grievance claims.
The Authority was unmoved. While acknowledging that the applicant did not succeed on all his claims, English found that he had prevailed on the substantive issues of wage arrears and holiday entitlements.
"Partial success is still success," she wrote. "In the round, the applicant was the successful party and is therefore entitled to an award contributing to his costs."
The Authority also declined to award either party an uplift. The employer had sought a $5,000 uplift for time spent on the applicant's unsuccessful personal grievance claims, while the applicant had sought a $900 uplift for the respondent's failed counterclaims.
English found that neither adjustment was...
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