Mr B Wytrzyszczewski v British Airways plc — 2020

This was an open preliminary hearing dealing with the respondent's application to strike out all claims because of alleged scandalous, unreasonable or vexatious conduct by the claimant, and its alternative application for a deposit order. The alleged conduct concerned the claimant's public blog posts about the proceedings, including publication of a without prejudice letter, tribunal correspondence, comments about a preliminary hearing, comments about recordings, and copying communications to senior management.

The tribunal found that the 2 April 2019 letter was covered by without prejudice privilege, but found no significant unreasonable conduct in the claimant's handling of the matter. The claimant had been a litigant in person, had not disobeyed a tribunal order, and any errors about without prejudice material, the status of the hearing, or admissibility of recordings were found to have been inadvertent or minor and quickly addressed. The tribunal concluded there was no basis for finding that strike out would be proportionate or that a fair trial could not be held.

The tribunal also refused a deposit order on the protected disclosure claims, including detriment and dismissal. On a provisional view, the claimant had an arguable case that he made qualifying disclosures about safety matters, there was potential evidence relevant to causation and timing, and the limitation issues were fact sensitive. The tribunal was not satisfied that those claims had little reasonable prospect of success.