Mr Cornell Bond v Apple Retail UK Ltd — 2022

This was an open preliminary hearing about time limits in Equality Act 2010 claims. The Claimant, employed by Apple Retail UK LTD as a Specialist since September 2009, brought allegations including direct race discrimination, harassment, victimisation and disability discrimination. The Tribunal recorded that the race discrimination and harassment allegations ran from 2009 to 2020, with most pre-2020 allegations concerning support for, or appointment to, roles, and that the 2020 allegations flowed from an end of year review in July 2020 where the Claimant said he complained about the development of himself and others of African descent.

The Tribunal found that all allegations of race discrimination, harassment and victimisation occurred before 19 November 2020 and were outside the primary limitation period after taking ACAS early conciliation into account. It accepted the Claimant's evidence that he did not know about employment tribunal time limits until receiving the Respondent's response, that he had not been told about time limits when he obtained legal advice, and that in the circumstances his ignorance of the time limit was reasonable.

For the 2009 to 2019 allegations, the Tribunal declined to extend time. It found that the delay was extremely long, that the Claimant had not complained about those incidents to the Respondent at the time, that the Respondent had no copies of the Claimant's internal applications, and that a number of relevant employees were unidentifiable, no longer employed, or overseas. The Tribunal concluded that serious forensic prejudice would arise if those allegations were allowed to proceed.

For the 2020 allegations, the Tribunal distinguished between complaints included in the Claimant's July 2020 grievance and those not included. It held that it was not just and equitable to extend time for the 2020 race discrimination, harassment and victimisation complaints not contained in the grievance, because the Respondent was not on notice of those complaints and had suffered forensic prejudice. It held that it was just and equitable to extend time for three victimisation complaints raised in the grievance, because the Respondent had been on notice of them from around July 2020, had investigated them through appeal, and suffered little prejudice from the delay. The judgment records that those three victimisation complaints and the disability discrimination claim continue; no remedy was awarded in this judgment.