Miss Fiona Mclaughlan v Represented by Mr S Smith - Solicitor Matalan Retail Limited — 2023

At this open preliminary hearing, the tribunal dealt with disability status, time bar, strike out and deposit orders. The claimant relied on Reynaud's disease and atherosclerosis, with toe amputations in December 2020, and after she provided fuller particulars the respondent accepted that she was disabled for section 6 Equality Act 2010 purposes, so disability status did not require a tribunal finding. The discrimination complaints were said to relate to the dismissal on 9 March 2022 and the appeal outcome on 9 June 2022, and the time bar issue for those complaints was reserved to the final hearing.

The tribunal refused the respondent's strike out applications. It applied the usual caution in discrimination and unfair dismissal cases and held that this was not a clear case for strike out. The claimant had been ordered to provide further particulars, a schedule of loss, disability vouching and specification of the material time of discrimination, and she did so late, but the tribunal found the non-compliance was not significant enough to justify strike out because a fair hearing remained possible.

The tribunal nevertheless held that the complaints of failure to make reasonable adjustments, discrimination arising from disability, unfair dismissal and holiday pay each had little reasonable prospects of success and made a deposit order of £15 in respect of each complaint, totalling £60. It found it highly unlikely that the claimant could show that the proposed reasonable adjustments would have been effective within the periods she proposed, noted that the justification and proportionality issues on the disability-arising claim would be for a full tribunal but were nevertheless weak, considered the capability dismissal likely to fall within the band of reasonable responses after the long absence management process, and held that the holiday pay claim was weakened by the respondent's holiday records despite a discrepancy over the annual entitlement figure. The tribunal also noted that after the appeal the respondent invited an updated GP report by 23 June 2022 to reconsider reinstatement, but that report was not provided until 27 September 2022.