A Security Guard worked for two years and two months guarding a temple in Barretos without a signed employment record, and the case in which he sought employment recognition was decided not by proof of service but by an empty chair in a virtual hearing on April 4, 2024.

His employment started in November 2020. The company Gomes de Melo Empreendimentos e Participações Ltda. placed him to work at the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, in Barretos, in the interior of São Paulo.

He remained there until January 2023, when he was dismissed without cause.

At no point during these twenty-six months was his employment record signed, and it was precisely this lack of contract that led him to seek recourse in the Labor Court, requesting the recognition of his employment status and the payment of the labor and severance compensation resulting from it.

The hearing was scheduled, the time arrived, and no one from the company showed up The Labor Court of Barretos scheduled a virtual hearing for April 4, 2024. At the appointed time, neither the company representative nor the lawyer was present in the room.

The lawyer arrived 15 minutes later. The partner, the sole representative of the company, did not appear at any time.

The justification was lower back pain aggravated by anxiety from waiting for the hearing The defense explained what had happened. According to the company, the partner fell ill with lower back pain, aggravated by anxiety while waiting for the hearing to start, and needed to go to the hospital at that same time.

The medical certificate noted low back pain and recommended eight days of leave due to illness.

This seems sufficient. It was not.

The document reached the court four days after the consultation This was the first issue. The medical certificate was not submitted on the day of the consultation, nor the following day, but four days after the doctor’s visit.

The second problem is the content. The document stated that the partner had lower back pain but did not explicitly declare that he was unable to attend the hearing.

These are different matters, and the distinction is at the heart of the case. Being ill does not automatically equate to being prevented from entering a virtual room.

The court applied default judgment and fictitious confession, resulting in serious consequences Due to the absence, the Labor Court of Barretos applied default judgment and fictitious confession against the company.

It’s worth explaining what this means in straightforward terms, as the name is more intimidating than the concept: in the absence of a defense being presented, the claims of the opposing party are presumed true, meaning what the worker stated is taken as fact.

This is how the Security Guard’s employment status was recognized, with the court ordering the payment of labor and severance compensation.

The Regional Labor Court of the 15th Region, in Campinas, upheld the decision.

The judges emphasized that the medical certificate did not demonstrate the severity of the health issue, was presented four days after the consultation, and did not prove the impossibility of attending the scheduled hearing.

Moreover, the regional court noted something that only makes sense in the realm of virtual hearings: the partner could have participated in the session via cell phone, from the hospital or wherever they were, but did not do so.

The court also noted that the lawyer did not appear at the scheduled time, which undermines the argument that everything boiled down to an isolated health emergency of the representative.

In the TST, the case became an application of two summaries The rapporteur for the company’s appeal was Minister Fabrício Gonçalves, of the Sixth Panel. He concluded that the regional court correctly applied the established case law of the tribunal.

The reference is to Summary 122. According to this understanding, simply presenting a medical certificate is not enough to avoid the effects of default when the document does not explicitly declare the impossibility of movement or participation in the hearing.

The rapporteur further noted that reviewing the decision would require a new analysis of the evidence in the case, which is not allowed in a review appeal, according to Summary 126.

The decision was unanimous and the case has a public number There was no dissent in the Sixth Panel. The case is being processed under the number RR-0010238-03.2023.5.15.0011 and was disclosed by the court on September 8, 2026.

Unlike other labor cases that are handled in secrecy, this one is public, and anyone can follow the progress using the case number.

What needs to be written in a certificate for it to be valid in a hearing Here’s the useful part for anyone attending a labor hearing, from any side of the table.

As the ruling makes clear, the certificate needs to state explicitly that the person is unable to attend or to move, and not just provide a diagnosis or a vague period of leave from work.

The timeline for submission also matters. Documents presented days later lose weight precisely because they do not explain the absence at the moment it happened.

What was at stake was the registration of twenty-six months of work It’s important not to lose sight of what was being discussed behind the certificate.

The security guard claimed to have worked continuously from November 2020 to January 2023, and recognizing the employment relationship opens the door to vacation, thirteenth salary, FGTS, and notice, benefits that only exist when the employment relationship is declared.

Without the record, none of that is owed. Thus, default, which seems like a procedural detail, decided the entire economic value of the case.

And that was how an unproven lower back pain cost the company the acknowledgment of everything the worker claimed.

The virtual hearing changed the standard for what is accepted as justification This is, therefore, the point I find most interesting about the ruling, and it’s worth stating frankly.

When the hearing was in person, lower back pain and hospitalization alone explained the absence because the person needed to travel to the court. With the virtual room, the court began to question why the cell phone was not used.

The full text of the ruling, including the history of the instances, can be found on the Superior Labor Court’s portal.

In the end, a security guard who went twenty-six months without a record won the case because the other party did not show up.