Case 2204198/2021 · Employment Tribunal
Ms S Coningham v Warner Bros. Entertainment UK Limited — 2022
- Case reference
- 2204198/2021
- Decision date
- 16 March 2022
- Jurisdiction
- England & Wales
- Judge
- Employment Judge A.M.S. Green
Parties
2 namedClaimant
Ms S Coningham
Respondent
Key findings
Tribunal's reasoningMs Coningham brought age, race and sex discrimination claims and an equal pay claim. At the open preliminary hearing the tribunal recorded that the indirect sex discrimination claim, the equal pay claim, and the withdrawn parts of the direct race, sex, age and harassment complaints were withdrawn. The live allegations concerned repeated refusals of promotion between June 2017 and January 2020 and an alleged failure to benchmark her role in March 2021.
Warner Bros applied to strike out the remaining discrimination claims or, alternatively, for a deposit order on the basis that they were time-barred and had no reasonable prospect of success. Employment Judge Green applied the strike-out and deposit-order authorities, including Anyanwu, Chandhok, Ahir, Hendricks, Owusu, Lyfar and Madarassy, and held that the pleaded case was capable of amounting to a prima facie continuing act: the promotion decisions and benchmarking complaint could be treated as part of the same practice or regime. The strike-out application and the deposit-order application were both refused, and no substantive liability or compensation was decided in this judgment.
Claims and outcomes
6 findings recordedThis case has mixed outcomes under at least one legal claim type. A tribunal can uphold some allegations and dismiss others under the same legal head, so rows below may represent separate issues or allegation groups from the judgment.
| Claim type | Issue or finding | Outcome | Protected characteristic | Award |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Age discrimination | Direct age discrimination allegations remained live after the withdrawal schedule removed some age allegations. The respondent's strike-out and deposit-order applications were refused at the preliminary hearing. | Other | Age | — |
| Race discrimination | Direct race discrimination allegations remained live after the withdrawal schedule removed some race allegations. The respondent's strike-out and deposit-order applications were refused at the preliminary hearing. | Other | Race | — |
| Sex discrimination | Direct sex discrimination allegations remained live after the withdrawal schedule removed some sex allegations. The respondent's strike-out and deposit-order applications were refused at the preliminary hearing. | Other | Sex | — |
| Equal pay | Equal pay claim withdrawn at the open preliminary hearing. | Withdrawn | — | — |
| Sex discrimination | Indirect sex discrimination claim withdrawn at the open preliminary hearing. | Withdrawn | Sex | — |
| Harassment | Harassment allegations withdrawn at the open preliminary hearing. |
Legal tests applied
9 references- Rule 37 no reasonable prospect of success
- Rule 39 little reasonable prospect of success
- Anyanwu v South Bank Student Union
- Chandhok v Tirkey
- Ahir v British Airways plc
- Hendricks continuing act test
- Owusu v London Fire and Civil Defence Authority
- Lyfar v Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust
- Madarassy v Nomura International plc
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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