Catriona Ball is being forced to sell her family home to keep a legal fight alive after an industrial tribunal hearing over her husband’s death was pushed to 2029. The hearing is now five years away, leaving her in the middle of an unfair dismissal case that has already outlasted the shock that began it.

Lewis Ball died in November 2024 at the age of 43, weeks after stepping down from a high-pressure senior management position. His wife has launched legal action against a medical technology firm, alleging severe workplace failures that contributed to his death. The case has become so drawn out that the family home is now part of what must be sold to fund the battle.

The delay is not just a private ordeal. The tribunal backlog has frozen Lewis Ball’s estate and left the family in financial limbo, with a hearing date so distant it underlines how overwhelmed the British industrial tribunal system has become. The source describes the system as drowning under an unprecedented backlog of unresolved cases, and this one has landed in the middle of it.

That backlog also shapes the kind of case Catriona Ball is facing. The legal action is highly complex and expensive, and the wait until 2029 means every month adds more pressure before any finding is made about the circumstances that led to Lewis Ball’s death. For the family, the process has already moved beyond a search for accountability and into a fight to stay afloat while the case sits in line.

What comes next is not a quick hearing but a long hold. Unless the case is accelerated, the family will have to keep carrying the cost of a dispute that has already forced a home sale, frozen an estate and turned a workplace death into a years-long financial burden before any tribunal can begin to hear it.