Anthony McCartney v Marshmallow Technology Limited and 2 others — 2025

This was a preliminary hearing in public before Employment Judge Andrew Jack (sitting at London Central by CVP on 13 December 2024) to determine the respondents' applications to strike out the claimant's remaining direct disability discrimination complaints, or in the alternative for deposit orders of £1,000 in respect of each. The claimant, whose claim relies on associative disability discrimination based on his wife's cancer (which the respondents accept was a disability at the relevant times), had already withdrawn complaints of failure to make reasonable adjustments, indirect disability discrimination and victimisation; the latter two were formally dismissed under Rule 52.

On the dismissal complaint, the Tribunal held that the reason for dismissal is the central dispute and turns on core issues of fact requiring oral evidence, applying Mechkarov v Citibank N.A, Ezsias v North Glamorgan NHS Trust, Romanowska v Aspirations Care Ltd and Bennett v MiTAC Europe Ltd. The strike-out application and the deposit order application were both refused, and the dismissal complaint proceeds to a full hearing.

On the grievance complaint, the Tribunal found that the claimant had no reasonable prospect of establishing that his distress at the refusal to instigate a grievance procedure was objectively reasonable, given that his employment had ended three months earlier and the respondent's grievance procedure expressly applied only to employees. Following Ahir v BA plc, the Tribunal also concluded there was no intelligible connection between the wife's disability and the refusal to instigate the grievance procedure. The complaint was struck out under Rule 37(1)(a).