E.T. Z (WR) EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS (SCOTLAND) Case No: 4105478/2020 (P)5 Held on May 2021 Employment Judge J M Hendry Mr D Dawson v University of Aberdeen — 2020

This was an interlocutory strike-out and amendment judgment in conjoined tribunal proceedings against the University of Aberdeen. The tribunal applied Rule 37, the overriding objective in Rule 2, and the authorities it cited on strike out and amendment, including Anyanwu, Ezsias, Ahir, Selkent, British Coal v Keeble, Mensah, Hendricks and Ishola. It refused to strike out the case in its entirety because the claimant’s dismissal challenge and some disability reasonable-adjustment allegations still required factual enquiry, but it said many of the other pleaded matters were vague, repetitive, time-barred, or lacked a clear link between the facts and the legal complaints.

The tribunal dismissed the harassment claim arising from Incident 1 because it had been withdrawn. It struck out the harassment/victimisation claims arising from paragraphs 7-15, the whistleblowing detriment claims arising from paragraphs 15-32 and the related detriment allegations in paragraphs 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 26 and 28, and the religion-or-belief allegations in paragraph 82. It also struck out the disability-related claim in paragraph 77 and the whistleblowing detriment aspect of that paragraph. The ordinary unfair dismissal claim was left to proceed to a hearing, while the automatically unfair dismissal claim said to arise under section 100 ERA 1996 was dealt with separately and referred to a deposit order in the operative order.