A Christmas Eve IT (and legal) Emergency
- leightonassociates
- 22 hours ago
- 2 min read
Christmas Day 2025 fell on a Thursday, with many workplaces shutting down on Friday 19th (including the Employment Court). But Sarah Kennedy-Martin, Member of the Employment Relations Authority, was busy.
A determination of the Authority described what appears to be a live, but dysfunctional employment relationship between anonymised parties “VPS Ltd” and “SIU”.
Dysfunctional for not much longer we bet – no employment relationship could survive what went down in late December, as we’ll explain.
Impaired retail operating system
SIU is (or was) the Head of IT, Systems and Data, reporting to the CEO of VPS, which operates a nationwide chain of retail stores.
This being the Christmas period, retail purchases were front of mind, and behind that, there are online retail operating systems. Before Christmas the retail operating system was blighted by some kind of fault, which could be temporarily resolved by having an external IT provider reset the system several times each day. The fault, while not catastrophic, was still disruptive.
The Authority’s determination went on to note that SIU repeatedly failed to provide the Source Code, which VPS said was necessary to carry out a more robust fix.
Why SIU did not provide the Source Code remains a mystery, but in conjunction with his remote access to the system while on leave, he appeared to have expressed concerns that “no blame could be apportioned to him should things go wrong”.
Injunction
The CEO of VPS convinced Member Kennedy-Martin that an interim injunction should be issued, to:
compel SIU to provide the Source Code
forbid SIU from accessing VPS electronic systems, or otherwise compromising them,
comply with obligations set out in his employment agreement.
Again, we don’t know much about the workplace dynamic, or what SIU was worried about being blamed for, against the backdrop of a glitchy online retail system. It’s possible that the employment relationship will end in a confidential settlement and we won’t hear any more. But it’s also possible that a further determination of the Authority will be publicised.
What we do know is that an ex-parte (without notice) injunction issued by the Authority is a first.
Tristam Price, Editor