Singh v McKee [2026] NZEmpC 146 - Employment Court increased PG compensation from $8,000 to $15,000

Mr Singh had already succeeded in the Authority on an unjustified dismissal arising from a truncated and incomplete redundancy process. By the time the challenge reached the Employment Court, the main live issue was the amount of compensation for humiliation, loss of dignity and injury to feelings. The Court increased that award from $8,000 to $15,000.

The redundancy finding was no longer the main dispute

The Employment Relations Authority had found Mr Singh's redundancy dismissal procedurally and substantively unjustified because the process was truncated and incomplete. That finding was not the central contested issue in the Court judgment.

A number of wage matters had also been resolved between the parties. The challenge was narrowed principally to whether the Authority's $8,000 award under section 123(1)(c)(i) fairly reflected the humiliation, loss of dignity and injury to feelings caused by the unjustified dismissal.

The Court considered the compensation bands

The Court considered the contemporary bands used to guide compensation awards. Those bands are not a mechanical tariff. The Court still has to assess the evidence of actual harm caused by the grievance and place that harm appropriately in the overall range of cases.

The judgment records the revised bands as: band one, $0 to $12,000; band two, $12,000 to $50,000; and band three, above $50,000. Mr Singh's harm was assessed in the lower part of band two.

Corroboration helps, but is not compulsory

Mr Singh relied substantially on his own evidence about the impact of the dismissal. There was limited corroborating evidence from doctors, psychologists, family members or other witnesses.

The Court treated the lack of corroboration as relevant to weight and quantum, but did not treat it as a legal bar. First-hand evidence from the affected employee remains capable of establishing humiliation, loss of dignity and injury to feelings. Independent evidence will often make a larger claim easier to prove, but it is not invariably required.

Compensation could not duplicate unrelated harm

Mr Singh had also pursued racial-harassment issues in the Human Rights Review Tribunal. The Employment Court emphasised that compensation in the personal-grievance proceeding had to address harm caused by the unjustified dismissal itself.

Section 123 compensation is compensatory, not a mechanism for duplicating awards made in another jurisdiction for separate or overlapping wrongs. The Court therefore kept the causal focus on the employment grievance before it.

Award increased to $15,000

The Court concluded that $8,000 understated the compensable harm. It substituted an award of $15,000, placing the case toward the lower end of band two.

The result is useful when assessing settlement and remedy evidence in ordinary personal-grievance cases. It shows both the importance of the employee's own evidence and the practical value of contemporaneous medical, counselling or witness evidence where available.

Why this case matters

For employee claims, the judgment is a useful remedies authority rather than merely another redundancy case. A claimant should clearly separate the emotional impact caused by the unjustified employer action from other life events or other legal claims, and should preserve whatever corroborating evidence is reasonably available. The absence of medical evidence does not automatically defeat compensation.

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Source: Employment Court judgment and related public material.