The High Court dismissed a lawsuit commenced by an ex-director, Kallivalap Praveen Nair, against his former company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Consumer Healthcare on Tuesday (18 Oct). He sued his ex-company for more than S$1.4 million over not being considered for other roles in the company after he was retrenched.
Mr Praveen Nair, who moved from India to Singapore in June 2018 after taking on the role of “global expert director” of the nutrition and digestive health business in the company, was told in December 2019 that no roles were available for him and that he would be made redundant.
In the suit, he claimed S$1.24 million in damages for breaches of his employment agreement. He also alleged that as a result, he had lost opportunities in landing other roles in the company, as well as in Unilever to which GSK Consumer Healthcare sold its nutrition business in April 2020. He contended that the company was obliged to adhere to its own policies, which included the code of conduct and equality policy to treat all employees equally.
Mr Praveen Nair is represented by Vikram Nair from Rajah & Tann. Both are not related. Vikram Nair himself is currently also the PAP MP of the Admiralty division of Sembawang GRC. During the trial, MP Nair argued that the employment agreement expressly imposes an obligation on GSK Consumer Healthcare to comply with its policies.
Mr Vikram Nair also said that his client was left off a list of personnel eligible for assessment for Unilever roles published by GSK Consumer Healthcare earlier.
When Mr Praveen Nair asked his manager why this was so, it was alleged that the manager said it might have been motivated by GSK Consumer Healthcare’s perception that he would be a threat to its consumer business if he had taken up the equivalent of a global expert role in Unilever. GSK Consumer Healthcare denied this and replied that Mr Praveen Nair was indeed invited to several interviews with Unilever but was ultimately not selected by the firm.
In his judgment, Justice Kwek Mean Luck said that only Mr Praveen Nair was obliged to comply with the policies as the employee and not GSK Consumer Healthcare as the employer.
According to his LinkedIn information, Praveen Nair has been working in India his whole life since he started work in 2000. It was only in 2018, that he was transferred to Singapore by GSK Consumer Healthcare as an intra-company transferee to become the “Global Expert Marketing Lead” for the “Nutrition & Digestive Health business” which has a presence in “South Asia, South East Asia, Middle East, South Africa & the Americas”.
The judge also dismissed a counterclaim of $95,211.87 by GSK consumer healthcare. The company contended that the sum that had been credited to Mr Praveen Nair was in excess of what he was legally entitled to.
