In person (assisted by her husband) For the v Respondent — 2022

This was a remote paper hearing before Employment Judge Andrew Clarke QC on whether the claimant's age and disability discrimination claims should be struck out or made subject to a deposit order. The tribunal applied the Rule 37 strike-out test and the Rule 39 deposit order test, and also kept in mind the burden of proof under section 136 of the Equality Act 2010. It proceeded on the basis that, on the disputed facts, the claimant could succeed in proving the matters she relied on, and it accepted that this was a fact-sensitive discrimination case where premature strike-out was usually inappropriate.

The claimant, who had been dismissed ostensibly for redundancy on 10 September 2020, pursued claims arising from the dismissal and the redundancy selection process. She relied on tendonitis and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder as disabilities, and by the hearing it was accepted that both conditions were disabilities for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, although the respondent did not concede knowledge of the OCPD. The tribunal noted that the claimant and her husband said the focus of the case was direct disability discrimination and section 15 disability-related discrimination, and they did not wish to pursue age discrimination or indirect disability discrimination.

In consequence, the tribunal dismissed the direct and indirect age discrimination claims and the indirect disability discrimination claim on withdrawal. It then declined to strike out the direct disability discrimination claim, the section 15 claim, or the later-added reasonable adjustments claim, and it refused to make deposit orders in respect of any of them. The tribunal recorded that the reasonable adjustments complaint had emerged during discussion at the hearing and was permitted to be added because it was treated as a relabelling of allegations already advanced.

The practical result of the decision was therefore limited to case management. No liability findings were made on the surviving disability claims, and no remedy was awarded in this judgment. The unfair dismissal claims were not challenged in this hearing and were to continue separately.