N Chukwu v Colt Technology Service — 2024

At the preliminary hearing on 2 April 2024, Employment Judge Henderson sat alone and the claimant did not attend or explain his absence. The tribunal accepted that the claimant had notice by email, proceeded in his absence, corrected the respondent name to Colt Technology Services, and dealt with strike out under rule 37(1)(a) rather than any deposit order. The judge recorded that the claimant had not complied with earlier directions for medical evidence or further particulars and had not sought to amend the claim.

The tribunal treated the pleaded case as containing disability discrimination, sexual-orientation discrimination, arrears of pay/other sums, and miscellaneous allegations. It held that the disability claim did not identify the disability relied on or the discriminatory acts alleged, and that the sexual-orientation claim contained no allegations at all. Applying the approach in Housing Corporation v Bryant, Ezsias, Anyanwu, Mechkarov and Cox, the tribunal struck both claims out as having no reasonable prospect of success.

On the money claims, the tribunal held that the £100m 'music royalties' allegation made no sense in the employment context and was not a claim for unlawful deduction of wages. It also held that the sick-pay point was not viable because the claimant had received full salary until 30 June 2021, then PHI payments, and an email from Canada Life after a 19 March 2024 psychiatric assessment indicated that he was unwell and unfit for work. The tribunal also struck out the sexual-advances and paragraph 5 'bodily phone' allegations as incoherent and unexplained. It considered capacity under Jhuti, but because there was no evidence showing lack of capacity it assumed the claimant had capacity to proceed; it did not strike the case out for failure actively to pursue it.