Mr Lucian-Sorin Andrei v DHL Services Limited — 2024

Mr Lucian-Sorin Andrei brought direct race discrimination and a wages claim, and later sought to add indirect discrimination and victimisation. At the 31 March 2024 preliminary hearing he withdrew the wages claim, the indirect discrimination claim, and all direct discrimination allegations except one concerning a November 2022 application for an operational support role.

The tribunal refused the amendment to add victimisation. It held that the grievance raised on 18 November 2022 was framed around nepotism and cronyism rather than a protected act, and there was no evidence that DHL believed he had done or might do a protected act. The proposed victimisation case also relied on different alleged detriments from those in the draft list of issues, was a substantive new claim raised late, and the Selkent factors favoured refusal.

The remaining race discrimination allegation was struck out under rule 37(1)(a) as having no reasonable prospect of success. Taking the claimant’s case at its highest, the tribunal found that the pleaded facts amounted to no more than a bare difference in treatment: he was Romanian, one successful candidate was Polish and the other’s nationality was unknown to him, and the three decision-makers were also Polish. The tribunal found no factual basis from which it could infer that the recruitment decision was based on race or national origin, so there was no basis to shift the burden of proof. No claim proceeded to a full merits hearing and no remedy was awarded.