Mr L Ramos v Green Tomato Cars Limited James Alexander ROWE Joseph Justin BITRAN — 2024

The tribunal gave an oral judgment on 26 July 2024 after deciding earlier in the hearing that it should not refuse itself. It ruled that the claimant could not refer in these proceedings to what the respondents allegedly said to the ACAS officer during early conciliation, because that material was inadmissible under section 18(7) of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 and was covered by without prejudice privilege. The tribunal also clarified that this did not prevent the claimant from asking the respondents about their reasons for not progressing his application after the 21 September 2022 interview(s).

On the respondent's strike-out application, paragraph 2.2 of the statement of claim was struck out in its entirety. The word "allegedly" was struck out from paragraph 2.3, paragraph 2.4 was left unchanged, and parts of paragraph 3 were struck out so that the remainder could be amended. The revised paragraph 2.3 pleaded that not allowing the claimant to proceed to the next stage of recruitment because he did not articulate well at the collective interview, without properly and fully assessing his English, was race discrimination because he was of foreign origin.

The tribunal held that the claim was not struck out because of alleged failure to comply with existing case management orders. It reserved judgment on the remaining parts of the strike-out application and said that a separate reasons document and summary and orders document would follow. The judgment therefore made no final merits decision on the underlying claims and no remedy was awarded.