Daughters also swore at her client’s partner after becoming “inebriated” during the meeting and later rang her boss, Carolyn Bennett, to admit that she had “------ up again” and offended a client, it was claimed.
She was subsequently sacked. Daughters then claimed for unfair dismissal but her claim was rejected by a tribunal.
She has however earned a fresh hearing after an appeal.
Daughters admitted being a “bit hazy” about events and that she had “quite a bit” to drink but said she swiftly apologised and denied that anything she did justified her sacking.
The tribunal heard that the client, named only as Emily, had arranged to meet Daughters at the Avalon pub in Balham, south London.
The woman said it was clear that the financial adviser had already been drinking, becoming “more inebriated” as the night wore on. At one point she “dragged” the client’s partner outside to have a cigarette even though he did not smoke.
She also alleged that Daughters had jokingly called her partner a “----”, leaving him shocked and offended.
Judge William Birtles said: “When the client did not want to carry on drinking at the same pace as her, Daughters berated her and demanded to know why she was drinking spritzers. The client became so upset that she began to cry.”
The tribunal heard that Daughters sent an apologetic email to her client the next morning saying: “I hope you can forgive me.”
The woman was said to have taken her to task over her behaviour but emailed back: “Let’s just move on.”
However the client was said to have later become “very upset and vociferous” during a 90-minute meeting with Bennett, Aqua’s chairman, who was “very embarrassed and angry”.
Daughters accepted that she had offended the woman and that “it was probably not sensible to drink in client meetings”. She said the details of what happened were “inevitably a bit hazy”.
She claimed that the client, with whom she said she had been drinking for four hours, had “become over-sensitive through drink” and that the incident was “not unduly serious” as the woman had accepted her apology.
Disciplinary action culminated in Daughters’ dismissal on grounds of alleged gross misconduct.
A south London employment tribunal concluded in October 2010 that it had “no hesitation in concluding that Miss Daughters’ conduct justified dismissal”.
But overturning the ruling, Judge Birtles said there had been a “clear dispute” over what had taken place in the bar that evening and that the tribunal had “made no attempt to reconcile these differing versions”.
He said the tribunal failed to explain why it considered the sacking justified and made an “error of law” by saying there was no “conflict of fact” in the case.
Allowing the appeal, the judge sent her case back to the employment tribunal for a new hearing.
