Miss R O’Connor v Young & Co’s Brewery plc — 2020

At the preliminary hearing on 21 July 2020, before Employment Judge Grewal sitting at London Central, the Claimant did not attend. The Tribunal was considering whether the claims should be struck out. The claim form alleged unfair dismissal and race discrimination, but the Tribunal noted that the race discrimination particulars were brief and lacking in detail, and the Claimant had not engaged meaningfully with case management.

The unfair dismissal complaint was struck out because the Tribunal found that it lacked jurisdiction to hear it. The Judge recorded that a claimant must normally have two years' continuous employment to bring such a claim, that none of the exceptions relied on here applied, and that the Claimant had been given the opportunity to explain why the claim should not be struck out but had not provided any reasons in writing.

The race discrimination complaint was struck out under Rule 37 of the Employment Tribunals Rules of Procedure 2013. The Tribunal found that the Claimant had failed to comply with multiple orders, including an order to provide a schedule of loss, an order to provide clear and specific particulars of the alleged incidents, and an order to explain her non-attendance at the earlier preliminary hearing with supporting medical evidence. The Judge also found that she had not attended either preliminary hearing and had not engaged with the process in any meaningful way.

In deciding that strike out was proportionate, the Tribunal applied the approach in Bolch v Chipman and Blockbuster Entertainment Ltd v James, alongside the overriding objective and Article 6 considerations. It concluded that further orders were unlikely to secure compliance, that a fair hearing was not possible in the foreseeable future, and that the Respondent should not incur further cost where the Claimant had already ignored earlier warnings. The Judge also recorded that, during the period of the proceedings, the Claimant had sent abusive, offensive and racist emails to her workplace, and found that the proceedings had been conducted in an unreasonable manner.