A solicitor’s amended grounds of appeal over a failed employment tribunal claim do not raise arguable errors of law, the Employment Appeal Tribunal has found.
Noel Deans was a salaried partner at the now liquidated City firm RBL Law Limited. He was, the EAT acknowledged, the firm’s first Black partner.
Deans joined the firm in 2017 and resigned in 2020. At tribunal, he brought complaints of protected disclosure detriment, direct race discrimination, race-related harassment, victimisation, unfair constructive dismissal (including on the basis that the reason, or principal reason, for dismissal was the making of protected disclosures) and wrongful dismissal.
The tribunal found the race-related harassment complaint in relation to the firm’s former chief executive, who used a racist phrase, to have been submitted out of time. The other complaints were dismissed on their merits. Deans appealed.
In a written judgment, His Honour Judge James Taylor found Deans’ grounds of appeal were not arguable.
In relation to ground five, the judge said: ‘General assertions in grounds of appeal, such as that the determinations of the employment tribunal were “in error of law, inadequately reasoned and/or perverse”, is not in compliance with the EAT Practice Direction and seems more like an attempt to cover all bases.
‘The detailed material in the ground is no more than an attempt to re-argue the complaints. There is no arguable error of law in the decision of the employment tribunal.’
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Dismissing Deans’ appeal, the judge said the tribunal’s judgment was ‘careful and detailed’. The tribunal ‘undertook its statutory function to determine the complaints brought by the claimant’ and reached determinations that were open to it.
‘It is not the role of the EAT to second guess the employment tribunal’s fact-finding,’ the judge added. 'The EAT can only intervene if there is an error of law in the judgment of an employment tribunal. Arguable errors of law should be capable of being set out briefly.'
