In Person For the v Respondent — 2023

The claimant brought disability discrimination complaints arising from the handling of a job application by the first respondent, a recruitment company, and the second respondent, an accountancy practice. The tribunal accepted that the claimant has autism and dyspraxia, both of which were accepted as disabilities by the respondents. It dealt with the respondents' application to strike out the claim, applying the approach that a claimant's case should be taken at its highest and that strike-out in discrimination cases should be confined to the most obvious cases, citing Cox v Adecco and ors 2021 ICR 1307 EAT.

As to the first respondent, the tribunal found that it had reformatted the claimant's CV and that some disability-related information from the claimant's own CV was not included, including the request to make an oral application. However, on the evidence before it the tribunal could not conclude that the claimant had no reasonable prospect of showing that he had been disadvantaged or that the second respondent would have acted differently if the information had been passed on. The first respondent's application to strike out the claim, and its alternative application for a deposit order, were therefore refused.

As to the second respondent, the tribunal struck out the reasonable adjustments allegation because it found there was no reasonable prospect of establishing the pleaded PCP that the respondent operated a practice of requiring oral applications through a recruitment agent. The tribunal noted that the second respondent was using a recruitment firm rather than advertising directly for applications and that there was no evidence it operated the alleged PCP. It also struck out the direct discrimination allegation based on alleged failures to respond to emails, finding from the documents that the second respondent had responded on 14 October 2021 and that a subject access request was answered the same day.

The tribunal also considered and rejected the respondents' argument that the claim was vexatious. Referring to Attorney General v Barker 2000 1 FLR 759, it accepted that the claimant had a history of tribunal litigation and that campaigning through litigation is not a proper use of the court process, but it did not accept that this particular claim was brought to harass respondents. It refused to strike out the claim against the first respondent on that basis because there was potentially a case to answer on the discrimination complaint against it.