Ex-managing partner must pay £210k costs of failed employment tribunal claim

A former managing partner who filed employment tribunal claims has failed in a bid to argue he could not pay up to £210,000 in costs.

Michael Willis was diagnosed with cancer and went off sick from Yorkshire firm GWB Harthills LLP in 2018. He received payments from a permanent health insurance (PHI) scheme, but a ‘bitter dispute’ arose concerning whether the claimant could receive profit share paid into his pension in addition to the PHI payments, an employment appeal tribunal heard.

Willis submitted two claims to the employment tribunal, but it ‘was highly critical’ of him and ordered the claimant to pay the respondents’ costs capped at £210,000, with the amount of costs to be determined by way of a detailed assessment.

He appealed the costs judgment on grounds including that the employment tribunal failed to take into account the effect of the award on his wife and children.

But in Willis v GWB Harthills LLP & Ors (Practice and Procedure), Judge James Tayler dismissed his appeal, explaining that the employment tribunal had been ‘clearly highly sceptical’ of Willis’s evidence that the value of his family home had only increased by £100,000 over the last 20 years. Willis had purchased his home for £850,000 and suggested its value was now £950,000, but a Zoopla valuation showed a value of between £1.47m and £2.2m. 

The judge explained: ‘When it chose to have regard to the claimant’s ability to pay the employment tribunal was entitled to adopt a reasonably rosy assessment of the claimant’s likely future circumstances. The employment tribunal repeatedly noted that the claimant had a half-share in the family home. While it did not specifically refer to the consequences that a sale of the house would have on his wife and children, I do not consider it was required to do so, particularly because on any valuation this was a very substantial capital asset.

‘In taking a realistic view of the claimant’s future ability to pay, I do not consider that the employment tribunal erred in law in considering the possibility of some form of equity release, even if it was not specifically canvassed in argument.’

The firm has explained that the costs award has since been recouped from Willis’s profit share, which Tayler said ‘may be of some comfort to the claimant in considering the practical consequences of this appeal being unsuccessful’.