Claimant v Kulkarni v Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust — 2019

Mr Kulkarni, a Medical Laboratory Assistant employed since 2002, brought a race discrimination claim against Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. The pleadings and later particulars covered harassment by GS, direct discrimination in promotion and career progression, grievance handling, break-time treatment, workload allocation, confidentiality issues and victimisation linked to complaints about GS. After two earlier case management hearings, the tribunal ordered him to answer 27 specific questions with succinct detail and then made an unless order requiring compliant particulars by 26 June 2019.

The claimant served a 24.5-page response, but Employment Judge Feeney held that it remained vague, repetitive and insufficiently particularised. Applying rule 38 of the Employment Tribunals Rules 2013, and noting that partial compliance would not suffice unless the order allowed it, the judge found material non-compliance with the unless order and struck out the whole claim. The judgment therefore did not determine the merits of the discrimination allegations at final hearing.

In the alternative, if the strike-out decision were wrong, the judge said many allegations would have been struck out under rule 37 because they had no reasonable prospect of success or because a fair trial was not possible, and some would have attracted £100 deposit orders under rule 39. The judge identified only limited, discernible points, including a 2015 remark by GS about the claimant's health, an alleged 21 July 2016 threat by AM to proceed with an investigatory meeting, a 2016 email-sharing complaint, and a promotion issue in which the claimant said he had not applied for the 2012 post relied on in comparison to GS; these matters were also treated as subject to time-limit issues if the claim had survived.