Introduction
A little over two years ago, I wrote about Conrad Thornton – warning potential hirers to properly conduct background checks into him.
As I explain in that post, he brought Employment Tribunal proceedings – which no doubt he will claim vindicate him. But for the reasons I explain, he has not been vindicated – and any claims otherwise ought to be deemed with suspicion.
This post intends to set out what happened in the Employment Tribunal, why he has not been vindicated, and why he keeps on lying!
Background
I won’t re-interate the Post, you can find here here, but the upshot is that whilst working for me, Conrad Thornton was serially dishonest, created CV’s that claimed he worked for me longer than he did, and generally fabricated ‘results’ within that CV (like £700,000 of sales) – despite having achieved nothing.
When we smoked him out, he issued Grievance demanding payments of about £10,000 ‘or else’ he would come after the company for far more.
When we explained he had been rumbled, his response was to block me on WhatsApp – despite leaving me as a connection on LinkedIn, along with false start/end dates for the company (stating he’d been in the business for 18 months, and traveled internationally – when he’d done neither) – before then blocking me on that, but leaving the references there……and followed through with his threat of Employment Tribunal proceedings.
During my tenure at the company, I defended the Employment Tribunal proceedings vigorously – and the Employment Tribunal was under no illusion to my position of what a little shyster he is.
The Employment Tribunal Proceedings
I departed from the company, leaving a handover of the litigation and what needed to continue to defend the claim. I stated I was prepared to attend as a witness, etc – and supported the ongoing defending of the action.
Seemingly, the owners of the company decided to leave things to boil.
This is not uncommon, sometimes companies don’t want the hassle or costs of defending a spurious claim.
Unfortunately, as a result of this, seemingly the company was issued with a Judgement in Default – and Conrad Thornton got the payday of his life……or so he thinks, of some £170,000+ (yes you read that right), despite starting off with a £15,000 claim.
The point to all this of course, as I explain later, is that the basis of the Employment Tribunal proceedings was pure greed and not justice or vindication. As a result, and as I explain below, a Judgement in Default in this case does not vindicate the complaints that Conrad Thornton is a serial liar to be well avoided.
Why isn’t Conrad Thornton vindicated?
One may think that because Thornton got a Judgement in Default, it means the complaints about him are effectively null and voided – and his reputation has been vindicated.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
The Judgement was a Remedy Judgement – it didn’t deal with the facts or the evidence – it simply dealt with financial reward.
A Remedy Judgement in Default simply means that the Court or Employment Tribunal didn’t hear the evidence. It doesn’t mean that if Person A said something about Person B, which Person B disputes, it’s false. It simply means for efficiency of an over-stretched justice system, it wasn’t necessary to deal with the factual matters.
So, if Conrad Thornton tells you a Remedy Judgement from the Employment Tribunal vindicates him – read it very carefully – as it does no such thing!
Judge Shotter and her disasterous mistakes!
If you have read my page on Judges, you will know I always say they are there to be scrupulously fair – and to be trusted.
One thing I didn’t say is that sometimes it can be the case the Judges in the lower courts can let their egos slip, and make huge errors of law.
This is exactly what happened in the Remedy Judgement, with Employment Judge Dawn Shotter making some huge legal mistakes, and letting her ego get the better of her.
In essence, the case Conrad Thornton brought was for £15,000 for employment related matters. However, when he realised he had been exposed by this Blog, he then widened his claim to say he his reputation had suffered – and he purported to show financial loss.
In reality, as we all know, reputation harm is a matter reserved for the High Court’s Media and Communications List.
Despite this, Judge Shotter waded into the issue, purporting to award tens of thousands of pounds of ‘financial loss’ due to reputation harm. She appeared to do so without any proof of the loss.
She had no right to do this; it’s totally out of her jurisdiction – and even if it was in her jurisdiction, it is not the company’s blog.
Having seen the evidence Thornton put forward myself, this part of his claim was also laughable – and in a real Defamation claim in a real Defamation Court, with a Judge who knows that their doing; the claim would be struck out. The person who Thornton claimed withdrew a job offer said via text message it was because of a “situation” with no further reference than that. Thornton replied, appearing to steer the conversation to the Blog. But there was no response to the text message – implying this was not the only “situation”. Either way, the Judge should not have been fooled by this.
I actually spoke to person who withdrew the job offer to Conrad Thornton, in my tenure at the company. He told me that Thornton’s references were not checking out, that he had been sent the CV stating Thornton worked at the company for 18 months (when it was more like 4), and he found the Blog during a Google search.
It is also worth nothing that Judge Shotter purported to award Thornton £12,500 + £115,870 in ‘damages’ for reputational harm, without hearing a shred of evidence…. About £123,000 in total.
By comparison, in the High Court, the largest recent Libel awards to any single individual have included Dale Vince in 2025 (£40,000), and Chris Packam in 2023 (£90,000). Even in the recent case of Fox, the Court of Appeal reduced damages from £90,000 to £45,000……. For an Employment Judge to be purporting to issue damages for reputation harm at some £123,000 – is clearly well off the mark, despite the fact she heard no evidence on the issue, she did not consider the veracity of Thornton’s claims……and errr….. she was straying well out of her lane!
For all of these reasons, it is clear if it ever came to it, there could be an obvious appeal over Judge Shotter’s financial rewards (how she got from £15,000 to £170,000!) and unfortunately her ill-advised straying into issues reserved for other Courts has completely prejudiced Thornton in any attempted libel claim under res judicata. All because Judge Shotter fancied playing a High Court judge for the day.
The only way around this for Thornton would be in effect to appeal the Remedy Judgement itself on the basis the Judge had no jurisdiction to make the awards on reputational harm – the very thing he asked Judge Shotter to do in the first place – and then persue a Defamation claim. The problem with that is limitation – and these posts are well beyond the 12-month cutoff.
Call the Bailffs!
As I have said repeatedly, Conrad Thornton lies. A lot.
So when the company, funnily enough, didn’t stump up the £170,000 – he spent his money on Bailiffs.
He decided to use the best, no sorry, cheapest in the business – Claire Sandbrook’s Shergroup, who knock on doors and threaten people for £80.
The problem is he lied when instructing them….. He gave them my personal (Hotmail) email address and my personal mobile phone number – despite knowing I departed the company over 1 year ago, have no control over it and nothing to do with the running of it!
Shergroup is a company deserving of its own Blog Post. Claire Sandbrook (who has retained the same hairstyle since about 2001), proudly records Vlog posts with other ‘business owners/influencers’ (you know the type), and her company appeared on Call the Bailiffs – she states her location as being in India, London and the USA. She’s very proud of using Indian call centres as her office – despite purporting to have an office in Holborn – which actually appears to be in Norwich.
Oddly enough, when asked for details of their Data Protection Officer (DPO) they fail to respond – and the Subject Access Request page on their website doesn’t work!
Likewise one of the letters I got show a company address, which is very clear on Companies House, is nothing to do with the company.
It’s of course Conrad Thornton’s right to try and get the ill-awarded money somehow…..but when he knows I am not a debtor, to provide Shergroup my personal details – is simply dishonest. And of course, I am getting daily emails and calls from these idiots in India!
Conclusion
This is very long-winded way of saying nothing has changed with Conrad Thornton.
He may have a Judgement awarding him some £170,000, but that Judgement does not vindicate him, and the fact or position he’s a lying shyster has never been tested in any Court. To date no Judge has looked at the evidence of dishonesty and concluded it doesn’t amount to the complaints made about Conrad Thornton.
As far as this Blog is concerned – if you are even thinking about hiring him – be very careful he will almost certainly lie – and you may end up with a mendacious Employment Tribunal claim to defend!
