Mr A Morgan, Counsel For the v Respondent — 2021

This was a claim under s.18 Equality Act 2010. The claimant said Lawtons Solicitors Ltd decided not to retain her because she notified pregnancy on 10 October 2017. The tribunal recorded that this was not an unfair dismissal case, although the factual context was that her fixed-term training contract ended on 3 January 2018 without renewal and that the complaint focused on the 2 November 2017 communication telling her she would not be offered a post as a newly qualified solicitor.

The tribunal accepted the respondent's evidence that Mr Halloran and Mr Titchener jointly decided by the last week of April 2017 at the latest that the claimant would not be offered a post after qualification. It found that the decision was taken before either decision-maker knew of the pregnancy, and therefore pregnancy played no part in the decision. It rejected the claimant's evidence that the other witnesses had lied, and it treated the contemporaneous emails and other surrounding evidence as more consistent with the respondent's account than with the claimant's case.

The discrimination complaint was dismissed. The tribunal also found, for the purposes of the costs application, that by late March 2019 the claim had no reasonable prospect of success under rule 76(1)(b). It considered the interest of justice and ability to pay, gave little weight to means because there was no up-to-date evidence from the claimant, and ordered her to pay the respondent £3,000 in costs.