Oversight of legal advisors in sex-pest boss case
Employment law specialists mhl support have highlighted what appears to be an oversight by rival company Peninsula in the way they handled the case brought against beauty salon boss Nicholas Ellis.
The 32-year-old attended a tribunal in Manchester this week, but before the hearing could get underway, he admitted sexual harassment and agreed to pay his former employee Sarah Whitefoot £10,000 in an out of court settlement.
Miss Whitefoot had brought a case of sexual harassment, sex discrimination and unfair dismissal against him, citing a catalogue of incidents of sexual harassment, and a final text message dismissing her.
Marc Schroder CEO of mhl support, said that when the case was settled out of court, there seems to have been a glaring omission – the insistence on a confidentiality clause from Mr Ellis’s advisors.
"When Mr Ellis agreed to settle out of court, that should have been the end of the matter, but because a gagging order was not placed on Miss Whitefoot, she was able to divulge all of the tawdry details of the case to the press – precisely what Mr Ellis had wanted to avoid by settling out of court."
"As a result, as well as paying out £10,000 in compensation to his former employee, he has had his professional and personal reputation damaged because of the personal and explicit details of the case being splashed across the national press," he said.
"While I am not condoning Mr Ellis’s behaviour, he appears to have been ill-advised by his legal team, who ought to have indicated the out-of-court settlement on condition of no details being divulged to third parties. The damage done to Mr Ellis and his businesses in this case go way beyond the £10,000 financial penalty. We have represented clients in a number of out-of-court settlements and we have taken steps to ensure the details remained private – I would advise anyone seeking advice on matters of a similar nature to check their legal providers’ intentions with respect to that," he said.
