Mr David Lemer, Counsel For the v Respondent — 2020

The claimant, Mr Lancelot Lewis, was a Signaller employed by Network Rail. After a 24 July 2018 level-crossing incident in which he wrongly allowed a member of the public to cross and then failed to report the matter, the respondent carried out a disciplinary process. The tribunal held that it was reasonable to investigate and discipline the claimant because he had admitted he did not report the incident, the matter was serious, and race played no part in the process.

The tribunal rejected the claimant's direct race discrimination complaint about the disciplinary process and the final written warning dated 5 June 2019. It found the comparators relied on were materially different: Sophie Hurley was leaving, Les Dart's relevant incident had been reported, and the Ian Cattini/Huxley matters involved trainee-related errors that had also been reported. The tribunal concluded that the warning was issued because of the failure to report a potentially serious incident, not because of race.

On harassment, the tribunal did not accept that Mr Cattini had in fact used the words alleged by the claimant. It noted that the source of the allegation was a statement from Hayley Giles, and that she had not given specific examples of racist language when previously questioned in her own grievance. That limb of the harassment case therefore failed on the evidence.

The tribunal did find that Network Rail failed to investigate the allegation properly when it was raised in relation to Mr Groucott's grievance process and again when the claimant raised it in his own grievance. It held that those failures were unwanted conduct related to race, and that they had the effect of violating the claimant's dignity and creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. In all other respects, the claimant's claims were dismissed.