A former president of Nottinghamshire Law Society faces allegations of discrimination against a former employee, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard today.
Ashish Bhatia, admitted in 1985, is also alleged to have failed to notify the Solicitors Regulation Authority of a 2019 employment tribunal judgment which found that pregnancy was a factor in the employee's unfair dismissal. The regulator learned of the case only as a result of a report in the Nottingham Post, the tribunal heard.
Victoria Sheppard-Jones, for the SRA, told the SDT that the employment tribunal had concluded that Bhatia’s notes of a meeting with the employee the day before her dismissal were ‘not all contemporaneous’.
Bhatia claimed to have suspected the employee of benefit fraud but an investigation by the Department for Work and Pensions found no evidence of that. ‘The employment tribunal did not find Mr Bhatia’s evidence as to his belief of a criminal offence being committed as credible,' Sheppard-Jones said. 'The SRA submits that finding was the correct finding.’
She told the three-person panel that ‘because the matter was settled [Bhatia] believed that somehow the settlement expunged the decision of the employment tribunal and [he] did not need to report it to the SRA’.
Sheppard-Jones said: ‘The SRA submits that is nonsense.
‘It is quite clear that the employment tribunal is not expunged. The settlement is the remedy to deal with what the employment tribunal found.’
Bhatia denies two allegations: that he discriminated against an employee of the firm by treating her unfavourably in relation to pregnancy or maternity and that he failed to notify the SRA of the employment tribunal judgment.
The hearing, which is listed for five days, continues.
