PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE Striking-out / dismissal
PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE Imposition of deposit
Rules 37(1) and 39(1) Schedule 1 Employment Tribunal (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) Regulations 2013
The Employment Tribunal (‘ET’) had struck out the Claimant’s claim of protected disclosure detriments and dismissal as having no reasonable prospect of success. In the alternative, the ET would have made deposit orders (two orders of pounds 250) as a condition of pursuing those claims. The Claimant appealed.
Held: allowing the appeal against the strike out of the Claimant’s claims but upholding the ET’s alternative decision to make deposit orders
The ET had erred in law in holding there was no qualifying disclosure when the information disclosed was already known to the recipient. It had also erred – given the degree of dispute between the parties and the test for causation in a protected disclosure detriment case – in applying too low a threshold when determining whether the Claimant’s claims had no reasonable prospect of success. The same could not be said, however, in respect of ET’s alternative decision to impose deposit orders as a condition of the continued pursuit of the protected disclosure claims; it had not lost sight of the burden of proof under section 48(2) Employment Rights Act 1996 and had reached a permissible view that the claims had little reasonable prospect of success – an assessment that involved an exercise of judicial discretion, which an experienced ET was best placed to make.
The matter would be remitted to the ET to formally draw up the deposit orders, which would stand in substitution for its previous strike out decision
Citations:
[2019] UKEAT 0121 – 19 – 1308
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Employment
Updated: 06 September 2022; Ref: scu.642755