Mr. M Hale v Wilko Limited — 2023

This was a preliminary hearing listed to determine the Claimant's application for specific disclosure and the Respondent's application to strike out complaints of automatically unfair dismissal and detriment. The Claimant said he had made protected disclosures orally on 1 March 2018 to his line manager, Mr Toal, and a director, Lisa Wilkinson, and again on 17 February 2022 to Alison Hand, Managing Director, and Jerome Saint-Marc, Chief Executive Officer, each time about violent storms and health and safety risk.

The Respondent argued that the complaints had no reasonable prospect of success because there was no evidence of a protected disclosure, no proper causal link, and because the decision to close the DC2 depot was said to have been made by Chris Ryan rather than the Claimant. The Claimant said he was responsible at board level for health and safety, that Mr Ryan was his direct report, and that he had instructed the closure of DC2.

Applying Rule 37 of the Employment Tribunals (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) Regulations 2013, and the authorities in Balls, Anyanwu, Ezsias and Ahir, the Tribunal held that strike out is a high test and that material disputes of fact usually require evidence at a full hearing. It found that there were triable issues about whether the alleged oral disclosures were made and whether they were protected disclosures.

The Tribunal also considered the causation issue and the email evidence said to relate to the DC2 closure, but concluded that the material did not justify striking out without hearing evidence from the Claimant and relevant witnesses. The Respondent's application to strike out the complaints of automatically unfair dismissal and detriment was therefore refused. The Claimant's specific disclosure application was dealt with separately in case management orders.