Your rights: Hello, you're sacked

I recently started a job in a cafe. Exactly one week after I began, the cafe stopped trading and I lost my job. It now seems that the company knew full well that they were going to close when they offered me the job, and I probably replaced someone who had left because they knew what was going to happen. I left a good job to take this new role. Is there anything I can do?

You may have a claim, and it would certainly be an interesting one to take to court. The most obvious practical problem you have is that if the cafe has ceased trading, it probably has no money. You can't get blood from a stone (no matter how guilty the stone may be) and you should consider the possibility that you could go through and win in court, but then find that the cafe doesn't have any money to pay.

Your second problem is going to be evidence. For you to have any chance of succeeding (whether this means in an agreed settlement or a win in court), you will need strong evidence as to what the cafe knew about its plans to cease trading when it hired you. Had definite plans to close been made, or was the cafe merely in "grave danger" of failing? Obviously it will be much harder for you if the cafe believed it had a chance of trading out of trouble when you were employed. You could try and track down the employee whom you replaced and find out what he or she knew - it may be that he or she is prepared to provide a statement that could support your claim.

You would also need to be able to show that they said things to you that were misleading, or that they should not have said, given what they knew about their future plans. This whole area throws up some quite tricky legal issues. You will almost certainly have a claim (which you can bring in a number of ways) if the cafe deliberately lied to you. However, if the person who hired you simply kept silent and allowed you to make your own assumptions that the job would continue, the situation is far less clear.

As I said above, depending on the details, this could be a really interesting case to bring. Interesting, that is, for lawyers - for you that could mean a lengthy court case and the possibility of appeals even if you did win the first round.

If you do have strong evidence that the cafe knew it was going under when it hired you, I do think it would be worth taking the issues to mediation, and trying to extract a settlement. You should look for a lawyer who will be aggressive, but can also give you realistic and practical advice.

* This question has been answered by Geoff Bevan, a solicitor with Chapman Tripp.  Answers are of a general nature only and should not be substituted for specific legal advice.

* Email your employment law questions in 200 words or less to the email address below with "Your rights" in the subject line. Questions are not normally acknowledged on receipt and will be answered only through this column.