Claimant v St Edward Homes Ltd (‘SEH’) and Others — 2020

The tribunal dealt with a large cluster of linked claims against SEH and individual Berkeley respondents, AKSL and Ms Oldbury-Davies, PCR and its personnel, and NES and Mr Burcow. It refused the claimant's application for a restricted reporting order under rule 50, holding that the public-interest principle in open justice and article 10 outweighed the claimant's private-life concerns arising from possible stigma if he later returned to Nigeria.

As to the Berkeley claims, the tribunal held that the bulk of the allegations repeated matters already decided in the 2016 and 2017 litigation and were therefore res judicata or an abuse of process. The remaining allegations about the wrong shirt size, alleged concealment of emails and Mr Michaels's notes, and the long lunch-break allegation either should have been raised earlier or had no reasonable prospect of showing a detriment. The automatic unfair dismissal, whistleblowing and health and safety claims were struck out, and the breach of contract claim was dismissed because it was out of time and outside the tribunal's jurisdiction.

The second Berkeley claim also included race discrimination, which the tribunal struck out on the same res judicata and abuse grounds. The tribunal accepted the claimant's point that later disclosure of documents in 2018 had occurred, but held that this did not create a new race discrimination claim or displace the earlier decisions. In substance, the tribunal treated the later claim as another attempt to re-litigate issues already determined against the claimant.

Against AKSL and Ms Oldbury-Davies, the claimant alleged religion or belief discrimination, victimisation and whistleblowing detriment arising from the April and May 2018 correspondence about the training invoice and disclosure of his data. The tribunal held that the short period involved, the forwarding of the message to Berkeley, and the staged disclosure did not amount to detriments with a sufficient connection to religion, that the protected-act/victimisation case was not made out, and that no specific protected disclosure was identified. It also held that the s.108 Equality Act close-connection requirement was not satisfied. Those claims were struck out.

The PCR claims were treated differently. The tribunal rejected the argument that they were vexatious or clearly out of time, and said that the claimant's multiple claims and forceful correspondence did not justify strike out at that stage. It held that some allegations had little reasonable prospect of success and made separate deposit orders, but the strike-out applications were dismissed so those claims remained live at that point.

The NES claims were the only ones the formal order dismissed. The tribunal held that the alleged blacklist issue, the service-address correspondence and the Court of Appeal complaint were too remote from the earlier employment relationship to satisfy s.108 EQA, so the claims had no reasonable prospect of success. It declined to make costs or preparation-time orders at that stage, reserving those issues for later consideration. No compensation award was made in this judgment.