Mr C Miller-Tuitt v Swale Heating Limited [First Respondent] John Roche [Second Respondent] — 2022

At the video preliminary hearing on 27 September 2022, Employment Judge Shore considered three linked claims brought by Mr C Miller-Tuitt against Swale Heating Limited and John Roche. The tribunal corrected the respondents' names, held that the claim against Mr Roche in the First Claim was barred by cause of action estoppel, and struck out the Second Claim in its entirety. Any proceedings against Claire French were dismissed because no ACAS certificate had been obtained against her.

The claimant's attempt to add direct discrimination because of religious belief and/or harassment related to religious belief in the Third Claim was refused. The tribunal said it was a new matter relating to 2020 with no explanation for why it had not been brought earlier, and it concluded that the respondent would be more prejudiced by allowing the amendment than the claimant would be by refusing it. Because religious belief was the only new matter in the Third Claim, the remainder of that claim was struck out as an abuse of process.

The tribunal struck out the pregnancy/maternity discrimination claim as misconceived because the claimant accepted he had never been pregnant and was not a woman. When he said the real complaint was about paternity pay, he could not clearly identify the child's date of birth. The claims for unauthorised deductions of wages were also struck out because the claimant could not explain their basis. By contrast, the race discrimination claim was clarified sufficiently to be understood and was not struck out at that stage; the remaining live claims were unfair dismissal and direct race discrimination against Swale Heating Limited.