Mr I Laing v Bury & Bolton Citizens Advice
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | Judge Auerbach,Mr N Aziz,Mr A D A Hammond |
| Neutral Citation | [2022] EAT 85 |
| Subject Matter | Not landmark |
| Court | Employment Appeal Tribunal |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
Judgment approved by the court for handing down Mr I Laing v Bury and Bolton Citizens Advice Bureau
Page 1 [2022] EAT 85
© EAT 2022
Neutral Citation Number: [2022] EAT 85 Case No: EA-2020-000194-AT
EA-2020-000217-AT
EA-2020-000253-AT
EA-2020-000451-AT
EA-2020-000659-AT
EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL
Rolls Building
Fetter Lane, London, EC4A 1NL
Date: 01 June 2022
Before :
HIS HONOUR JUDGE AUERBACH
MR N AZIZ
MR A D A HAMMOND
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Between :
MR I LAING Appellant
- and -
BURY & BOLTON CITIZENS ADVICE Respondent
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Mr M Singh for the Appellant
The Respondent did not attend and was not represented
Hearing date: 31 March 2022
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JUDGMENT
Judgment approved by the court for handing down Mr I Laing v Bury and Bolton Citizens Advice Bureau
Page 2 [2022] EAT 85
© EAT 2022
Summary
PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE
VICTIMISATION
The claimant in the employment tribunal was dismissed after a short period of employment. The
respondent’s case was that it had done so because of a large number of incidents, in a short space of
time, in which he had badly undermined, upset or been rude to a number of colleagues.
The claimant, acting as a litigant in person, complained that he had been stereotyped as a sexually-
aggressive black man, and dismissed because of both race and sex. He also claimed that he had
complained, in a conversation and then an email, about the conduct of a female colleague towards
him being over-personal in a manner that he considered amounted to harassment related to sex, so
that he had done protected acts, and that his dismissal was an act of victimisation.
At a preliminary hearing an employment judge made deposit orders in respect of the direct sex and
race discrimination claims. He did not err by so doing. At the full merits hearing, the tribunal erred
by proceeding on the basis that it did not have the power to consider an application to extend time for
paying the deposits retroactively. Sodexho Limited v Gibbons [2005] ICR 1647 applied. However,
on further consideration the tribunal properly concluded that that application was unmeritorious.
The tribunal also ultimately did not err in its final approach to the question of whether four of the
claimant’s former colleagues should be required to attend the hearing under witness orders.
The tribunal in its reserved decision held that the claimant had not, in fact and law, made protected
disclosures in a conversation with a manager, and then an email to her the next day. It also held that,
in any event, if that was wrong, such disclosures were not the reason for dismissal.
Some lack of detail in the reasoning of the tribunal on these two points would not, by itself, have led
to the challenge to those decisions being upheld. Nor did the fact that the respondent’s counsel was
a member of the same chambers as the part-time judge give rise to an appearance of bias, or need to
have been disclosed by the judge. A challenge to that effect was therefore not upheld. Nor were any
Judgment approved by the court for handing down Mr I Laing v Bury and Bolton Citizens Advice Bureau
Page 3 [2022] EAT 85
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of the claimant’s criticisms of the judge’s conduct of the hearing as unfair to him upheld.
However, the claimant also complained of the extent to which the tribunal’s decision dwelt on his
conduct as his own representative during the hearing, the strong language that the tribunal used to
describe this, and the way in which it drew on this in support of its conclusions on the substantive
issues. He also drew on remarks made by the lay members when commenting on issues in the appeal
that had been raised with them by the EAT. The EAT rejected the claimant’s suggestion that he had
been stereotyped (subconsciously or otherwise) by any member of the tribunal. However, standing
back and considering these features in the round, the fair-minded informed observer would conclude
that there was a real risk that the tribunal’s view of the claimant’s difficult and challenging behaviour
during the course of the hearing had engendered an antipathy towards him which had unconsciously
influenced the tribunal’s collective decision on the two critical issues raised by the victimisation
complaint. Those issues were therefore remitted for rehearing before a freshly-constituted tribunal.
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Mr P McAuley v Ethigen Ltd: 4105806/2022
...and Others v. Eioyaccu [2009] UKEAT 0023_09_0611 (6 November 2009), Laing v Bury & Bolton Citizens Advice (VICTIMISATION) (Rev1) [2022] EAT 85 (01 June 0458_08_1202 (12 February 2009). 15 41. The Tribunal has reviewed these cases and it is clear that the claimant has fundamentally misread t......