Mr D Lee v BMW (UK) Manufacturing Limited — 2021

The judgment concerned a public preliminary hearing on whether the claimant's claims should be struck out as having no reasonable prospect of success, including on limitation grounds. The claimant's first claim included allegations of direct race discrimination and victimisation, and his second claim alleged further victimisation. The respondent denied the claims and argued that the discrimination and victimisation complaints had no reasonable prospect of success and that parts of the claims were out of time.

On the direct race discrimination complaint, the tribunal held that the claimant had identified a comparator of a different race and had alleged a failure to follow the respondent's performance management procedure. The tribunal considered that such matters could potentially support an inference of discrimination and that the absence of an earlier allegation of race discrimination did not make the claim totally inconsistent with discrimination.

On victimisation, the tribunal noted that the claimant accepted his grievance did not contain an allegation of race discrimination, but found it remained arguable that section 27(1)(b) of the Equality Act 2010 could apply. For the second victimisation claim, the tribunal found it could not decide the reasons for the respondent's acts without hearing the full evidence. The tribunal also found the claimant had shown a prima facie case on time limits, but made no substantive determination on limitation. The claims were not struck out.