Mr M Mikans v The Co-Operative Group Ltd — 2023

The claimant, a warehouse operative, brought claims of direct race discrimination based on Latvian nationality and victimisation based on his role in assisting his wife with earlier Equality Act proceedings against the respondent. The claims arose from an incident in which Mr Malecki, while acting up as team manager, took a picture and short video from a CCTV monitor showing the claimant using his mobile phone at work, and from the respondent's handling of the claimant's subsequent grievance and appeal.

The tribunal found that the claimant had not proved facts from which it could conclude that the complained-of treatment was because of race. It accepted the respondent's evidence that Mr Malecki challenged the claimant because he had seen him using his mobile phone at work, that Mr Prior spoke to Mr Malecki after the complaint, that Ms O'Reilly referred the grievance to another senior manager because of her working and caring circumstances, and that Mr Hill's handling of the grievance was not tainted by race discrimination.

The victimisation complaints were also dismissed. The tribunal found that Mr Prior had not ignored the complaint, Ms O'Reilly had not failed to take the grievance seriously, the grievance policy allowed only one appeal, there was no separate CCTV policy to send, and Mr Keyworth did not obtain Mr Malecki's team manager's name because he did not consider it relevant. The tribunal found no evidence connecting those matters to the claimant's protected act.

After dismissing the claims, the tribunal allowed the respondent's costs application. It found that the claims had failed for substantially the same reasons as those identified when deposit orders were made, and ordered the claimant to pay the respondent's costs in the sum stated in the judgment as £10,380.00; a later paragraph gives £10,308.00, so this has not been treated as a claimant remedy in the remedies fields.