Dr L Reynolds v London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine — 2019

At the preliminary hearing on 3 September 2019, Employment Judge Elliott considered the respondent's strike-out application in claim 2202348/2019. The application concerned allegations 2, 3, 6 and 7 against the background of Judge Walker's earlier case management order on the claimant's amendment application in claim 2205737/2018. The respondent accepted that allegations 1, 4 and 5 from the earlier claim were live, and accepted that the victimisation complaints about the grievance process and the removal of the claimant's name from a door were in.

On allegations 2 and 3, the tribunal declined to strike out the sex discrimination claims. It held that the timing issues and the claimant's continuing-act argument required factual testing, and that strike out would be too draconian without evidence. The claimant confirmed that she did not pursue age discrimination on allegations 2 and 3.

The tribunal struck out the whistleblowing element of allegations 2 and 3 because the disclosures were not identified with sufficient precision to disclose a valid whistleblowing claim. It also struck out allegations 6 and 7 as victimisation claims for no reasonable prospect of success, adopting Judge Walker's reasoning and noting that the claimant had acknowledged there was no protected act before the detriments and that the matters relied on pre-dated the first ET1 used as the protected act.