Mr S Swanson, Solicitor For the v Respondent — 2018

This was a preliminary hearing rather than a liability decision. The parties agreed that Staples UK Limited should be removed as a party, leaving SUK Retail Limited as the respondent. The claimant withdrew his indirect disability discrimination claim, and the respondent withdrew its own costs application.

The respondent sought strike out or, alternatively, deposit orders for the discrimination and protected disclosure claims. The tribunal refused strike out of the race, disability, and protected disclosure claims because it could not say they had no reasonable prospect of success and considered that the issues needed evidence at a full hearing. On the race claim, the respondent was pursuing a deposit order rather than strike out, but no deposit order was made. On the disability claim, the tribunal said the ET1 particulars were inadequate, but that this could be addressed by further and better particulars, so strike out was not appropriate; it did, however, make a deposit order for that claim.

The respondent also applied for wasted costs arising from the claimant representative's non-attendance at the earlier hearing listed for 16 August 2017. Applying Rule 80 of the Employment Tribunal Rules of Procedure 2013 and the three-stage wasted costs approach it cited, the tribunal found elements of the representative's conduct unreasonable and accepted that the respondent had incurred counsel's fees as a result. It nevertheless refused a wasted costs order because it was not just in all the circumstances to require compensation. The tribunal also ordered further and better particulars, a schedule of loss, disability impact information and GP records relevant to disability, and listed the case for a full liability hearing in June 2019.