Mr T Reynolds v Capita Customer Management Ltd PRELIMINARY HEARING — 2021

This was a preliminary hearing in which Employment Judge Grundy dealt with the respondent’s strike-out and costs applications, not the merits of the claimant’s whistleblowing case. The tribunal recorded that the claimant’s claims related to whistleblowing about possible fraud in the sale of rail tickets and to whether he satisfied the statutory criteria in Part IVA of the Employment Rights Act 1996. The issues of time limits and joinder were not resolved in this judgment, and the joinder issue was dealt with by case management order.

The respondent applied to strike out the claim under Rule 37(1)(b) on the basis that the claimant’s conduct of the proceedings was scandalous, unreasonable or vexatious, and alternatively sought costs. The tribunal accepted that there had been unreasonable conduct by a litigant in person, including scattergun correspondence, failure to follow directions, unnecessary material about a subject access request, an excessive schedule of loss, and other communications relied on by the respondent. The claimant said he was an amateur litigant, described himself as passionate about the whistleblowing, and referred to personal difficulties and issues with GDPR and his SAR.

The tribunal refused strike out, describing that remedy as draconian and saying it had not reached the point where strike out was justified. It held, however, that the respondent’s costs had reached at least £20,000 and that the threshold for a costs order was met because a substantial part of those costs had been caused by the claimant’s unreasonable conduct. In assessing means, the tribunal noted the claimant’s evidence that he had £3,000 in savings and his earlier statement that he could pay a deposit order of up to £4,000, and it ordered him to pay £1,000 to the respondent in respect of costs within 28 days.