WHISTLEBLOWING, PROTECTED DISCLOSURES, PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE
You can’t decide whether a claim has reasonable prospects of success if you don’t know what it is. Before considering strike out, or making a deposit order, reasonable steps should be taken to identify the claims, and the issues in the claims. With a litigant in person, this involves more than just requiring the claimant at a preliminary hearing to say what the claims and issues are; but requires reading the pleadings and any core documents that set out the claimant’s case.
The issues were not sufficiently identified in this case, which was the backdrop to the errors of law the tribunal made in determining that the claim of protected disclosure detriment or dismissal had no reasonable prospects of success because the tribunal: (1) failed to sufficiently analyse the information the claimant contended he had disclosed; (2) failed to consider the context in which the disclosure was made; (3) misdirected itself as to the test for whether protected disclosure were in the reasonable belief of the claimant made in the public interest; and (4) failed to properly analyse to whom the disclosure was made, and whether it was arguable that any qualifying disclosure was protected.
Citations:
[2021] UKEAT 0339 – 19 – 0904
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Employment
Updated: 07 December 2022; Ref: scu.661950