Mr S Boros v AAH Pharmaceuticals Ltd — 2023

This is a reserved judgment from a preliminary hearing rather than a final liability decision. Employment Judge McDonald sat alone at Manchester (by CVP) on 6 January 2023, with deliberations in chambers on 16 February 2023. The judge formally dismissed on withdrawal the claimant's claims of breach of contract and race-related harassment, the claimant having previously confirmed at a case management hearing on 27 July 2022 that he was not pursuing them.

The judge granted the claimant's application to amend his claim to add three allegations of victimisation under s.27 of the Equality Act 2010 (V1-V3), so the live claim comprises eight allegations of direct race discrimination (RD1-RD8) and the three victimisation allegations. The judge then refused the respondent's application to strike out those claims or to make them subject to a deposit order. The judge held that, taking the claimant's case at its highest and given the absence of undisputed contemporaneous documentation conclusively disproving his account, it could not be said that the claims had no reasonable prospect of success.

The underlying dispute concerns the claimant's hourly pay rate following an August 2021 pay announcement, the treatment of a "trial rate" of £11.75 per hour versus a basic rate of £9.17 plus an FLT allowance, the handling of his grievance, and subsequent events including a deduction from pay in October 2022. The judge emphasised that refusing strike-out does not mean the claimant will succeed at the final hearing; whether there was less favourable treatment because of race, and whether the matters complained of amount to victimisation, are matters for the final hearing.