Mr Megha (for Ms Woodun) Ms Leaver (for Ms Kellam) For the v Mr Singer PRELIMINARY HEARING — 2021

At a preliminary hearing on 12 March 2021 before Employment Judge Bartlett, the tribunal consolidated Ms Woodun’s and Ms Kellam’s claims because both arose from the same alleged redundancy exercise and would involve overlapping factual evidence. The hearing was concerned with proposed amendments rather than the merits of the underlying dismissals, and the tribunal noted that both claimants had struggled to identify with precision the nature of some of the claims they wished to add.

Ms Woodun’s proposed amendment to add race discrimination was refused. Her case was put as an indirect discrimination complaint about not being given the opportunity in October 2019 to take a role in the USA instead of being made redundant, but counsel could not identify a coherent provision, criterion or practice. The tribunal therefore refused the amendment.

Ms Kellam’s proposed victimisation amendment was rejected. The tribunal first noted that the detriment initially identified, an email from Bernhard Gilbey to Oliver Braunwalder dated 15 January 2020, pre-dated the protected act first relied on, namely the ET1 presented on 15 March 2020. When the protected act was changed to her dismissal appeal, the tribunal treated the proposal as a new cause of action. It also observed that, on the limited material before it, the claim appeared to have little or no reasonable prospects because the complained-of email was an internal communication about the respondent’s position and did not obviously amount to a detriment under section 27 of the Equality Act 2010.

Ms Kellam’s application to amend to add associative disability discrimination was granted. The amendment was based on a statement attributed to Mr Michael Seres that she would not be able to move to the US because of caregiving responsibilities, and on a decision said to require an employee taking a US post to pay visa costs of about £8,000. The tribunal accepted that she only became aware of Mr Seres’s comments on 31 March 2020, that the application had been made within three months of that date, and that allowing the amendment would not cause substantial prejudice because the circumstances of the dismissal and the US role were already relevant to the wider case. The tribunal also refused Ms Kellam’s applications for specific disclosure and for further and better particulars.