Mr Dullaghan v Audley Court Limited — 2024

Mr Dullaghan worked as leisure club manager at Redwood from 20 September 2022 and also carried out private personal training outside his contracted hours under an arrangement reached with the previous general manager, Luke Millikin. After Simon Williams became interim general manager, the respondent raised concerns in early March 2023 about the claimant taking new PT clients, and on 2 March 2023 he was interviewed in a room with a glass door next to the restaurant that the tribunal found was visible to the public and not sound-proofed. On 7 March 2023 Mr Williams wrote that PT sessions should be outside contracted hours and that no further owners were to be taken on.

The tribunal held that the claimant's 23 March 2023 grievance about sex discrimination was not a qualifying disclosure for whistleblowing because it was essentially a private dispute and he did not genuinely and reasonably believe it was made in the public interest. By contrast, the oral complaint made to Michelle Forbes on 25 May 2023 about the respondent's obligations to provide person-centred care was a qualifying protected disclosure, but it came after the earlier detriments and there was no evidence that it caused the DSAR delay.

On 30 March 2023 the respondent suspended the claimant after concerns were escalated about morphine in syringes used for Mrs AB. The tribunal found the allegations had been exaggerated in the internal process, but it accepted that Mr Williams decided to suspend and that the grievance against him was in his mind. The suspension, including the claimant being publicly escorted off site, was therefore victimisation; the remaining victimisation allegations were not proved to have been because of the grievance.

The claimant was dismissed for gross misconduct on 5 June 2023 after a disciplinary process about the same incident. The tribunal found that Michelle Forbes genuinely believed he had drawn up morphine syringes for Mrs AB and that there was an unacceptable risk, so the protected disclosure dismissal claim failed. It also rejected the Jhuti and Baddeley arguments, finding no sufficient evidence that a hidden senior-level motivation or manipulation made the protected disclosures the principal reason for dismissal.

Direct sex discrimination failed because Mia Sanchez was not in materially the same position as the claimant for either the 2 March meeting location point or the 7 March email about PT sessions. The judgment records liability findings only and sets out no monetary award.