Ms S Tillman v Cazoo Limited — 2023

At a preliminary hearing in London Central by video on 16 February 2023, Tribunal Judge McGrade sitting alone considered the respondent's applications to strike out and to obtain deposit orders in relation to the claimant's race-discrimination complaints arising from an interview for a legal counsel role. The claimant said she had been asked questions including whether she spoke Spanish at home, whether she was Hispanic, whether she was American, how long she had lived in the UK, where she lived, and when she graduated, and she said the questions were connected to race and national origin.

The tribunal treated the pleaded harassment and victimisation complaints as properly before it. Applying section 26 of the Equality Act 2010, it held that the interview questions, taken cumulatively, could amount to unwanted conduct related to race and could have the effect of violating dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. Applying section 27 of the Equality Act 2010, it held that the claimant's report of the questions to Ben Davies was capable of being a protected act and that the ending of the process and the elimination of the role were capable of amounting to a detriment said to follow from that report.

The respondent's strike-out application under Rule 37 and its deposit-order application under Rule 39 were both refused. Taking the claimant's case at its highest, the tribunal was not satisfied that any of the claims had no reasonable prospect of success or little reasonable prospect of success, and it said the claims of direct discrimination, harassment and victimisation would proceed to the final hearing fixed for 11 to 13 September 2023. No remedy was determined at this stage.