Ms T. Adams v Morgan Stanley & Co International plc and 1 other — 2023

The Claimant brought a claim form on 24 October 2023 that included complaints of automatically unfair dismissal by reason of making public interest disclosures under s.103A ERA 1996, together with an application for interim relief. The tribunal heard the application on 10 November 2023 on the papers and oral submissions only, without oral evidence, and applied the statutory test under s.129 ERA 1996 as a summary assessment of whether the Claimant had a "pretty good chance" of succeeding on the protected disclosure dismissal complaint at a final hearing.

The tribunal considered three alleged disclosures. It concluded that the April 2021 conflict of interest matter was framed by the Claimant as a possible conflict of interest and did not satisfy the threshold that the information disclosed must tend to show a probable, rather than merely possible, breach of a legal obligation. It reached the same view about the September 2022 Aston Martin bond matter, noting that the Claimant had described it as asking for guidance and had later said it was not intended to be whistleblowing. On that material, the tribunal said it could not conclude that either matter was likely to be found to be a protected disclosure.

The tribunal treated the 27 April 2023 grievance as a cumulative disclosure that repeated the earlier matters and alleged retaliation. It accepted that there was an arguable case that the grievance could amount to a protected disclosure because the Respondent's policies appeared to protect employees from retaliation for raising compliance concerns, but it was not persuaded at this interim stage that the Claimant would probably succeed in showing that this was what she believed at the time. Because the tribunal was not satisfied that the Claimant had a pretty good chance of proving that she made protected disclosures, it held that the interim relief application failed on that basis.

The tribunal also considered causation and said that, even if protected disclosures were established, it could not conclude that the Claimant had a pretty good chance of proving that the sole or principal reason for dismissal was the making of those disclosures. It noted the Respondent's case that a "coffee incident" had led to concerns about the Claimant's conduct and communication style, that there were disputed accounts of a March 2023 meeting, that the redundancy exercise affected others in the department, and that Mr Latif was not in sole control of the scoring process. The application for interim relief was therefore refused, and no monetary remedy was awarded in this decision.