A Scots nurse is suing her GP brother after he avoided telling her she had been fired for months in an attempt to ‘soften the blow’.
Anika Moughal has taken legal action against Dr Mohammed Moughal and his medical practice after he kept her in the dark for four months about sacking her from the surgery where he was a partner.
An employment tribunal heard the GP ‘used ambiguous language’ in April last year when he told his pregnant sister she would be sacked the following month.
Employment judge Mark Whitcombe said Ms Moughal had carried out ‘genuine and meaningful work’ at Greenlaw Medical Practice in Glasgow for more than three years, until she began to struggle with a ‘complicated’ pregnancy.
She was then moved to a remote role managing patients with chronic diseases, but was eventually dismissed entirely.
Judge Whitcombe said: ‘The first respondent [Dr Moughal] wished to soften the blow not least because he knew his sister was pregnant, and I find he used ambiguous language.’
When the GP broke the bad news to his sister, he avoided words such as ‘dismissed’ and ‘fired’, and never confirmed her dismissal in writing.
Instead, he simply suggested Ms Moughal should ‘stop logging in’, leaving her under ‘the impression that the situation was not, or not yet, permanent’, according to tribunal documents.
Nurse Anika Moughal whose brother failed to tell her she was sacked when she pregnant
Dr Mohammed Moughal used ‘ambiguous language’ to his sister
The uncertainty continued as Dr Moughal asked his sister to ‘bear with me’ while he addressed an ongoing dispute between partners at the Greenlaw practice, which has since been dissolved.
The GP’s instructions were so unclear that Ms Moughal did not realise she was unemployed until she was sent a P45 in August –three months after she had been removed from the payroll.
She is now suing the GP practice for unlawful deductions of wages, failure to inform her about changes to her contract and unfair dismissal. Judge Whitcombe said: ‘There was nothing which clearly and unambiguously communicated to the claimant that the terms of her contract were changing on a permanent basis.’
He added: ‘I do not think that a reasonable employee in the claimant’s position would have understood the first respondent’s words to amount to the communication of a dismissal in all the circumstances.’
The preliminary hearing, held in Glasgow, was told that Ms Moughal had worked for Greenlaw Medical Practice as a practice nurse from September 2020.
She had previously been employed at Greenlaw as a receptionist in 2013, and worked as a health care support worker there between 2014 and 2018 while she studied to be a nurse.
She had a break in summer 2020 to get married before returning to the practice to work as a nurse, largely working remotely.
On occasion, she would go to the GP practice to conduct Covid-19 vaccination clinics or smear clinics.
Greenlaw Medical Practice in Glasgow
Ms Moughal fell pregnant in 2023 and had a ‘complicated’ pregnancy after which she was asked to do fewer in-person clinics.
The tribunal was told: ‘The partners agreed in writing that the claimant [Ms Moughal] should be “off payroll from May 1, 2024”, but what was communicated to the claimant?
‘The relevant conversation took place between the claimant and the first respondent [Dr Moughal] at the end of April 2024.
‘The first respondent wished to soften the blow not least because he knew that his sister was pregnant, and I find that he used ambiguous language.
‘It was objectively ambiguous, and it also appeared ambiguous to the claimant.
‘The first respondent advised the claimant to stop working and to stop logging in.
‘He did not use words such as “terminated”, “dismissed”, “fired” or anything similar. He communicated that her work should stop.’
The case will be considered by a further employment tribunal at a later date.
