Mr P Mundin v Beal Developments Ltd: 1800455/2017
| Judgment Date | 24 October 2017 |
| Citation | 1800455/2017 |
| Published date | 03 November 2017 |
| Court | Employment Tribunal |
| Subject Matter | Age Discrimination |
Case Number: 1800455/2017
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EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS
Claimant Respondent
Mr P Mundin v
Beal Developments Limited
Heard at: Leeds On: 22 & 23 August 2017
In Chambers: 5 September 2017
Before:
Employment Judge J M Wade
Ms J Lancaster
Mr G Corbett
Appearances:
For the Claimant: Mr S Rice-Birchall (solicitor)
For the Respondent: Ms A Tusien (solicitor)
RESERVED JUDGMENT
1. The claimant’s complaint of unfair dismissal is well founded and succeeds.
2. The claimant’s complaints that a 2014 comment and his dismissal on 22
February 2017 were acts of direct age discrimination are dismissed.
3. The claimant’s complaints that a proposal to reduce his hours on 12 January
2017 and a letter giving notice to terminate his contract of employment dated 16
January 2017 contravened sections 39 and 13 of the Equality Act 2010 (direct
age discrimination) succeed.
REASONS
Introduction
1. The parties were both represented by solicitors. At a preliminary hearing on 22
May 2017 the claimant, a former director of the respondent building firm,
clarified his complaints as direct age discrimination, unfair dismissal and breach
of contract, the latter later confined to an alleged breach of an obligation to pay
him a bonus.
Case Number: 1800455/2017
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2. These complaints were heard by the Tribunal over two full days. The Tribunal
had time to deliver an extempore judgment upholding the breach of contract
complaint on 23 August 2017, which was sent to the parties on 24 August 2017.
No request for written reasons was made in respect of that Judgment. There
being no time for further deliberations, the Tribunal’s decision in relation to the
age discrimination and unfair dismissal complaints was reserved.
3. The alleged acts of age discrimination and other issues arising appear as
headings to our discussion and conclusions below. At all times the claimant
asserted that his ultimate dismissal, in circumstances of allegations concerning
his conduct, was an unfair dismissal, and that prior to that there had been a
number of acts amounting to age discrimination. The claimant was over the age
of 65 at the time of his dismissal and he asserted that he was treated less
favourably than those who belonged to a younger age group were, or would
have been, treated.
Evidence
4. The Tribunal had before us a helpful bundle of relevant documentation running
to some 200 or so pages to which there were two additions during the course of
the hearing. We heard from Mr Mundin, the claimant, and then from Mrs
Waudby, who dismissed the claimant, Mr Beal the Managing Director of the
respondent, Mrs Garnett who provided HR advice to the respondent, Miss
Connell who is the PA to Mr Beal, and Mr Jewitt, the claimant’s younger
successor at the respondent business.
5. There were a limited number of conflicts in the parties’ account of the chain of
events, which the Tribunal resolved only as necessary using all the tools
available to it, including the contemporaneous documentation at the time.
6. As to the oral evidence, the claimant struck the Tribunal as giving honest
evidence and to be broadly reliable in his recollection of events. His answers to
straightforward questions exploring his witness statement at times posed some
difficulty. One such exchange was particularly surprising, but revealed more
about the workings of the respondent’s mind than it did about the claimant’s
reliability:
Mr Rice-Birchall: “so even on your story you lied to Richard Beal?”
Claimant: “Yes I told him I was at my solicitors – I wasn’t thinking straight - as I
have said to Pauline, my father died of a heart attack at aged 68 and I did not
want to go the same way and I wasn’t thinking straight”
Mr Rice-Birchall “Maybe it was time to retire then?”
Claimant: “You are suggesting I am too old to work, I was quite capable of
working if not put under the stress that I was put under”,
7. Our overall assessment of the claimant was, though broadly reliable, he lacked
insight into the way in which his conduct was reasonably perceived by others in
the situation in which he found himself.
8. We considered that Mrs Waudby’s recollection of events was mixed and not
necessarily reliable given the documented chain of events; Mr Beal was greatly
assisted by his own note taking at various points; where notes were not
available, his memory was, like others, fallible. We considered that Mrs Garnett,
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