Ms D Grennan, counsel For the v Mr R Jones, solicitor — 2024

The claimant, Mr D Cooke, joined Provar Ltd in January 2020 and the respondent admitted that he was disabled for Equality Act purposes, including in relation to an ileo-anal J pouch, Crohn's disease and sacroiliitis. The tribunal found that the working relationship between Mr Cooke and Mr Richard Clark, who was the more senior officer, deteriorated over time, but it rejected Mr Cooke's case that Mr Clark bullied or harassed him. The tribunal found instead that Mr Waters listened to complaints, tried to appease both men, and took no meaningful action to address the growing conflict.

By February and March 2022, the tribunal found that Mr Waters had decided to bring Mr Clark back into the business and to remove Mr Cooke. It found that the meeting on 24 March 2022 was not a genuine discussion about alternatives but part of a plan to offer Mr Cooke severance, followed by a written without prejudice letter the same day. The tribunal also found that the grievance and disciplinary process that followed was a sham: there was no proper investigation, no fair sequencing of grievance and disciplinary matters, and no real consideration of repairing the working relationship, including mediation. On that basis the tribunal found a repudiatory breach of contract, held that Mr Cooke resigned in response to it on 21 April 2022, and upheld the constructive ordinary unfair dismissal claim under section 98(4) ERA 1996.

The wrongful dismissal claim for notice pay also succeeded, with the judgment recording an agreed three-month notice period. The decision was a liability judgment only, so no monetary award is quantified in the text. The tribunal nonetheless recorded that the claimant was entitled to his notice pay because he had been constructively dismissed without notice.

The disability discrimination claims failed. On direct discrimination, the tribunal found that the CPO appointment was made because Mr Waters wanted to retain Mr Clark's skills and that the dismissal arose from the breakdown in the working relationship and the respondent's concern about the claimant's ability to work collaboratively, not because of disability. On reasonable adjustments, it found that the claimant was not placed at a substantial disadvantage compared with non-disabled employees by the admitted grievance/disciplinary arrangements, and that allowing him to attend remotely was the reasonable adjustment in light of the health risks. On discrimination arising from disability, the tribunal accepted that the claimant's difficulty with international travel and face-to-face meetings arose from his disability, but found the challenged treatment was not because of that something and, where relevant, was pursued for the legitimate aim of protecting his health.

The victimisation claim failed even though the tribunal treated the 31 March 2022 grievance as a protected act, because the relevant steps had already been decided before that date and were not caused by the grievance. The whistleblowing detriment claim also failed. The judgment's reasoning on protected disclosure is internally inconsistent: the detailed reasoning at paragraphs 267 to 272 says the grievance was not a protected disclosure because it was personal rather than in the public interest, while paragraph 359 states that a protected disclosure was made; whichever formulation is applied, the tribunal found the alleged detriments and dismissal were already in train before the grievance and were not caused by any disclosure.