Pik v Goldman Sachs Services
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Rimer,Lord Justice Patten,Lord Justice Maurice Kay,Lord Justice Hooper,Lord Justice Tomlinson |
| Judgment Date | 29 November 2010 |
| Neutral Citation | [2010] EWCA Civ 1517,[2010] EWCA Civ 206,[2010] EWCA Civ 603 |
| Date | 29 November 2010 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | Case No: A2/2009/0213 |
[2010] EWCA Civ 1517
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL
Before: Lord Justice Maurice Kay
Lord Justice Hooper
and
Lord Justice Tomlinson
(His Honour Judge D Pugsley)
Case No: A2/2009/0213
The Appellant appeared in person.
Mr Daniel Stilitz QC appeared on behalf of the Respondent.
Lord Justice Maurice Kay:
This case is listed before us today as an application for permission to appeal with appeal to follow if permission is granted. That follows an order made by Rimer LJ on 17 February this year.
The case is one that has been processed through the employment tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal. The applicant, Mr Pik, was employed by Goldman Sachs as a quantitative analyst from 1 June 2006. His employment was rather short-lived. It came to an end on 30 June 2007. Even in between those dates it soon became apparent that there were difficulties with Mr Pik's employment, even on his own account.
As early as 1 October 2006 he began to express a belief that he was being conspired against by the Czech government and others. He imparted this information to Miss Sharon Kasok, a member of Goldman Sachs's employee relations group. She was troubled by what Mr Pik said and he was referred to Goldman Sachs's occupational health physician, Dr Johnson, who considered it likely that Mr Pik was suffering from a medical condition. This led to him being referred to a consultant psychiatrist. I should add that at this stage, Mr Pik expresses much criticism about the medical personnel by whom he was seen and the way in which their views have been used by Goldman Sachs. However, that is not immediately material to our task.
It is not necessary to go into the full detail of what Mr Pik is said to have imparted to Goldman Sachs and their medical advisors. Suffice it to say that in essence, he was complaining that people within Goldman Sachs had been heard speaking about him in circumstances suggesting some conspiracy or intrigue directed against him and involving the security services in the Czech Republic, the United States of America and this country. He referred to suggestions that he was a target for murder.
Following the referrals to the occupational health advisor and the consultant psychiatrist, and having encountered some difficulties in dealing with Mr Pik's allegations and his behaviour, eventually Goldman Sachs dismissed him, the effective date of termination being 30 June 2007.
He commenced proceedings in the employment tribunal claiming unfair dismissal, public interest disclosure dismissal and discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. The tribunal caused his case to be listed for a pre-hearing review which took place before Mr J M Edge, an employment judge, on 4 February 2008.
On any view, it was a somewhat bizarre hearing. It resulted in all Mr Pik's applications being struck out. He cross-applied to strike out Goldman Sachs's response but his cross-application was not successful.
As with any case that comes to this court via an employment tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal, although the jurisdiction of this court is limited to errors of law on the part of the Employment Appeal Tribunal the underlying question is whether there was any material error of law on the part of the employment tribunal, for if there was not there would be nothing with which the Employment Appeal Tribunal could interfere, their jurisdiction being limited to points of law as well.
Accordingly it is necessary to go back to the decision of the employment tribunal, which I should summarise in some detail. The employment judge relates that he started the pre-hearing review by enquiring of Mr Pik as to whether his claim should be struck out consequent to an allegation by Mr Pik himself that he had not in fact been dismissed.
There had been an issue as to the authority of the Goldman Sachs's employees who in fact dismissed him. The employment judge ruled that they did in fact have the authority to dismiss, and Mr Pik was then invited to concede that he had been dismissed by Goldman Sachs. One would have expected such a concession to be readily forthcoming since the very nature of his complaint was that he had been unfairly dismissed and unfairly dismissed for making a protected disclosure.
At this point, Mr Pik's responses to the tribunal became somewhat peculiar. He alleged that the case was one of espionage and terror and he made a number of allegations, which the employment judge referred to as follows. He attributes Mr Pik as having said:
"This case is about terror by MI5. Given the number of lies, there are strong indications this hearing won't be fair. There are strong indications of foul play by other parties which include medical parties, the Respondent and the Tribunal … This case is about public interest disclosure and espionage by MI5 and their proxies. There are strong indications that the Tribunal is a proxy of MI5 or similar secret services."
Mr Pik went on to allege that there was a cover-up in place and that the employment tribunal itself was possibly trying to cover up the espionage to which he had referred. He said that Goldman Sachs' solicitors were also involved in the cover-up of his allegations of espionage. So far as terror was concerned, he said that this was by MI5 and other secret services, possibly the Czech secret service. He alleged that the British secret services were involved in his dismissal from his previous employers JP Morgan in the same way that they were involved in his dismissal from Goldman Sachs.
As far as the allegations in his claim form about persons wishing to murder him were concerned, he said that he believed this was the Czech government. He believed that some secret service would murder him; he said there was close co-operation between MI5 and the Czech secret services and that MI5 relied on information from the CIA. He referred to sabotage. In that regard he said that he had attempted to hire a lawyer and had paid a deposit but the lawyer then refused to act for him. He had tried to hire private investigators but they had eavesdropped on him. He believed that MI5 was trying to cover that issue up and that they were blocking legal help, blocking private investigation and blocking proper medical advice.
Having heard these comments from Mr Pik the employment judge then returned to the question of whether Mr Pik accepted that he had been dismissed. To that Mr Pik replied, "I have no answer". That struck the employment judge as quite odd in circumstances where the pleaded case was one of unfair dismissal.
A point came when Mr Stilitz, appearing then as now on behalf of Goldman Sachs, indicated that he intended to apply to strike out the claim, whereupon Mr Pik said that he intended to apply to strike out Goldman Sachs's response. The rest of the hearing was concerned with those cross-applications.
There is nothing wrong with an employment tribunal deciding to hear such applications even when they arise spontaneously in the course of a hearing. The relevant statutory provisions are to be found in Rule 18(7)(b) and (c) of Schedule 1 of the Employment Tribunals (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) Regulations 2004. They provide as follows:
"(7) Subject to paragraph (6), a chairman or tribunal may make a judgment or order:—
[…]
(b) striking out or amending all or part of any claim or response on the grounds that it is scandalous, or vexatious or has no reasonable prospect of success;
(c) striking out any claim or response (or part of one) on the grounds that the manner in which the proceedings have been conducted by or on behalf of the claimant or the respondent (as the case may be) has been scandalous, unreasonable or vexatious; …"
It can be seen therefore that these strike-out provisions are directed at two possibilities: (b) is concerned with claims that are inherently scandalous or vexatious or have no reasonable prospect of success; (c) is concerned with the manner in which the proceedings have been conducted, where it has been scandalous, unreasonable or vexatious. It is plain from the face of the decision of the employment judge that Mr Stilitz applied by reference to (b) and (c), being concerned about not only the nature of the very claims but about the way in which Mr Pik had conducted himself up to that stage of the hearing.
In making the application to the employment judge Mr Stilitz submitted that Mr Pik had acted unreasonably in refusing to accept that he had been dismissed, in circumstances where that was the essence of his claim. Mr Stilitz also referred to wide-ranging and unfounded allegations of a very serious kind against many parties, including the employment tribunal itself. He submitted that the public interest disclosure claim had no real prospect of success because Mr Pik could not have had a reasonable belief as to the espionage and threats of murder which lay at its root.
Mr Stilitz further submitted that the sexual orientation claim which related to the non-payment of the 2007 bonus was in any event without reasonable prospects of success because Mr Pik had been dismissed before he would have become entitled to be considered for such a bonus.
In his reasoned decision, the employment judge seems to have concentrated on the conduct of the proceedings and whether that was scandalous, unreasonable and vexatious rather than upon the suggested scandalous, vexatious and without reasonable prospect of success limb. The employment...
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