A fired ALDI worker has unsuccessfully made an unfair dismissal claim and been ordered to pay costs at the Fair Work Commission after relying heavily on AI to make his case.
A worker cannot make an unfair dismissal claim unless they have been employed for a period of at least six months.
Sadnan Khan was notified of his dismissal three days short of that milestone and was repeatedly warned by the FWC that it would doom his case and leave him vulnerable to a costs claim by ALDI should he persist to a hearing.
It did not persuade him to stop.
The FWC’s decision says:
If Mr Khan had properly read for himself the emails from the Commission shortly before the hearing, he would have realised the unfixable flaw in his case and the very fixable exposure to a costs order – and immediately discontinued. If Mr Khan had properly read for himself the AI generated material on which he relied so heavily, and compared it to the general information on the Fair Work Commission’s website, and compared it to the specific information he had been provided from the Commission member deciding his case, he would have realised that his AI arguments were just plain wrong. ALDI had no choice but to defend the claim. Mr Khan could have and should have chosen to cut his losses when he had the chance.
Mr Khan was ordered to pay $1230 in costs to ALDI but the FWC decision notes the whole case is a pyrrhic victory for the supermarket chain.
Unfortunately there has been no winner in this matter. ALDI incurred significantly more than $1230 in legal fees defending an application that should never have been made. Mr Khan was never eligible to make his unfair dismissal claim and is now $1230 worse off than he was before he started. The losses for both parties were utterly preventable. If Mr Khan had properly read for himself the first email he received from the Commission two days after his application was lodged, he would have immediately discontinued.
The FWC decision noted the restraint of ALDI’s costs application saying:
ALDI’s application was sensibly confined to the costs it incurred from the time Mr Khan was squarely on notice from the Commission that there was no substantial prospect of success and that the continuation of his claim would put him at risk of a costs order.
For his part, Mr Khan said he would have not pursued the hearing if someone had called him to explain why his case was doomed – the FWC noted this was “not at all satisfactory”.