Mr G v E C Eguez 1 Churchill Contract Services Limited 2 Jones Lang Lasalle Limited — 2022

The claimant, Mr Eguez, was employed by the first respondent as a supervising cleaner in offices managed by the second respondent and occupied at least in part by Facebook. He brought an automatic unfair dismissal claim, alternatively an unlawful detriment claim, for trade union activities against the second respondent. After a show-cause process and written submissions, Employment Judge Kurrein held that the claim against the second respondent had no reasonable prospect of success and struck it out.

The tribunal held that claims of that kind had to be brought against the claimant's employer, which was the first respondent. It rejected the claimant's reliance on Royal Mail Group Ltd v Jhuti [2019] UKSC 55 because he was trying to use that principle to attribute alleged reasons of the second respondent to the first respondent, but there was no direct evidence that the second respondent had improper motives or that those motives could properly be imputed to the first respondent.

The tribunal accepted that the first respondent dismissed the claimant after the second respondent requested that he and a manager be removed from the contract because of an alleged shortcoming in his standard of work. It also accepted that the first respondent asked the second respondent to reconsider, placed the claimant on gardening leave, offered alternative vacancies on other contracts, and gave notice only after those vacancies were declined; the claimant did not appeal and had started new employment on 1 October 2021, before his employment ended on 27 October 2021. On that basis, the tribunal said the first respondent's reasons appeared to be connected with his refusal to consider alternative employment rather than any reasons held by third parties.