The former president of Nottinghamshire Law Society has been cleared by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal of discriminating against a pregnant employee after a three-day hearing.
The three-person panel ruled that an allegation that Ashish Bhatia, admitted in 1985, had discriminated against a pregnant employee by treating her unfairly was not proved. A second allegation, that Bhatia failed to notify the Solicitors Regulation Authority of a 2019 employment tribunal’s judgment, was proved. The tribunal imposed a reprimand in relation to the second allegation and ordered Bhatia pay costs in the sum of £1,000.
Bhatia is founder and managing director of East Midlands firm Bhatia Best. In closing submissions, Gregory Treverton-Jones KC, for Bhatia, told the tribunal that the employment tribunal judgment that found Bhatia had discriminated against a former employee in regard to pregnancy or maternity had made a ‘large number of serious errors’.
Describing the meeting on 8 August 2017, the day before the employee was sacked, Treverton-Jones said: ‘This is a pastoral meeting at which some serious problems she is facing are being considered and a way through them is being arranged.’
He added: ‘Mr Bhatia honestly believed that she was guilty of benefit fraud and this was the reason and sole reason to dismiss her.’
He submitted that allegations of misconduct put forward by the Solicitors Regulation Authority would be ‘vanishingly unlikely’.
’First of all he is not the sort of person, Mr Bhatia is very upfront, very straightforward and the last sort of person to erect some quasi-smokescreen to get rid of an employee’, Treverton-Jones said. ‘Secondly it is not the sort of firm Bhatia Best is. Thirdly if he wanted to sack her, he could have or would have on the 8th [of August]. He would not have gone through the charade of not dismissing her on the 8th to do so on the 9th on some trumped-up charge.’
The hearing previously heard an employment tribunal judgment found pregnancy had been a factor in the employee’s dismissal. The SRA learned of the case as a result of a Nottingham Post article. Following the employment tribunal judgment, Bhatia reached a settlement with the former employee. He paid £50,000 compensation and £30,000 for the employee’s legal costs.
Bhatia denied both allegations before the SDT and gave evidence on the second day of the hearing.
The panel made its findings on the third day of the five-day listed hearing. It ordered that Bhatia be reprimanded and pay costs in the sum of £1,000. Full reasons for the ruling will be published in the near future.
