Mr J Davies, Counsel For the v Mr C Strutt, Director — 2019

Ms Imbimbo worked part-time for Lucky Media Limited as Head of Marketing and managed affiliate relationships. She told Mr Strutt on 2 May 2018 that she was 21 weeks pregnant. She was suspended on 3 May 2018 and dismissed summarily by email on 8 May 2018. The tribunal also recorded that Mr Strutt had been looking into a new company, Super Good Games Limited, which he believed was being set up in competition with Lucky Media, and that he had sought HR advice before the dismissal.

The tribunal accepted that the claimant had established facts from which pregnancy-related discrimination could be inferred, including the timing of the suspension and dismissal after her announcement, procedural defects, and incomplete disclosure. It therefore treated the burden of proof as shifting to the respondent under section 136 Equality Act 2010. However, after reviewing the evidence as a whole, it found that Mr Strutt genuinely and reasonably believed the claimant and her partner were setting up a competing gaming business, and that this belief pre-dated the pregnancy announcement.

The tribunal found that pregnancy was not the sole or principal reason for dismissal, and not even part of the reason. It accepted that the respondent’s treatment of the claimant was unrelated to pregnancy and that the claimant was dismissed because of Mr Strutt’s concerns about potential breach of contract and competition. The tribunal noted that the dismissal process would have been unfair had this been an ordinary unfair dismissal claim, because the claimant was not told the charge in advance, was not warned of dismissal risk, was not offered a companion, and had no effective appeal, but those defects did not make these particular claims succeed.

Accordingly, both the automatic unfair dismissal claim and the pregnancy/maternity discrimination claim were dismissed. The provisional remedy hearing listed for 28 November 2019 was cancelled.