Case 1803852/2020 · Employment Tribunal
Miss Samantha Doherty v Asda Stores Limited — 2020
- Case reference
- 1803852/2020
- Decision date
- 4 December 2020
- Jurisdiction
- England & Wales
Parties
2 namedClaimant
Miss Samantha Doherty
Respondent
Key findings
Tribunal's reasoningThe tribunal struck out the claimant's unfair dismissal claim at a preliminary hearing. The claimant accepted that she had used the words complained of to a customer, and the tribunal found that the words could be and were understood by that customer as referring to race.
The tribunal recorded that the claimant did not argue any procedural flaw in the respondent's disciplinary process and was aware of the relevant policies. On the claimant's admissions, the tribunal found it was open to the respondent to treat the conduct as gross misconduct under its policies and that dismissal was a reasonable outcome.
Applying Rule 37 and considering whether the claim had a realistic rather than fanciful prospect of success, the tribunal found there was no conflict of evidence on the key points requiring a full hearing. It concluded that the claim had no reasonable prospect of success and dismissed it after strike out.
Claims and outcomes
1 finding recorded| Claim type | Issue or finding | Outcome | Protected characteristic | Award |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unfair dismissal | The unfair dismissal claim was struck out under Rule 37(1)(a) on the basis that it had no reasonable prospect of success. | Struck out | — | — |
Legal tests applied
3 references- Rule 37(1)(a) Employment Tribunals (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) Regulations 2013
- Swain v Hillman [2001] 1 All ER 91
- realistic as opposed to fanciful prospect of success
Official outcome judgment PDF
Gov.uk primary recordThe official judgment PDF on gov.uk contains the tribunal's outcome, reasoning, and any remedy details. Where this page does not yet show extracted outcomes for every claim, use the PDF as the authoritative source.
Published on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
How we got this data
Case essentials (reference, date, judge, venue, country, claim categories) are extracted from the structured metadata gov.uk publishes alongside each decision. Parties and monetary figures are extracted from the judgment PDF text. Key findings and per-claim outcomes require a second extraction pass that is not yet complete for this case — until then, the primary source linked above is the authoritative record. See full methodology.
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