A former managing partner with a Yorkshire firm has failed with a claim that he was marginalised and excluded by other partners after being off work through illness for nearly three years.
Michael Willis said that his fellow partners at GWB Harthills LLP had taken around £360,000 of profit out of the business while he received nothing, during a period where he was absent for cancer treatment and then with depression.
But following an eight-day hearing, Employment Judge Rogerson ‘very reluctantly’ concluded that Willis was ‘not a truthful witness’ and he had attempted to mislead the tribunal in the evidence he gave.
‘It was a difficult decision to make given the serious consequences it will no doubt have for the claimant personally and for his reputation after more than 20 years as a practising solicitor,’ said the judge. ‘However, by bringing these allegations to a hearing, the claimant had decided the complaints he has made should be open to that level of scrutiny.’
The tribunal heard that criminal law specialist Willis had been a co-founder and managing partner of predecessor firm Grayson Willis Bennett and stayed in that role in 2015 when it merged with Harthills Solicitors. The second and third defendants were both former partners at Harthills.
Willis was absent from work due to ill health from July 2018 to his retirement in March 2021. He had already successfully claimed in 2020 for discrimination and a failure to make reasonable adjustments following limited admissions from the defendants.
But he brought a further claim seeking to broaden the scope of the admissions and alleging, among other things, that as a result of discrimination and victimisation his profit share was withheld and he was subjected to a ‘barrage of correspondence’ from the firm and other partners maintaining a ‘hostile and aggressive tone’.
The judge found no evidence to establish a case that the other partners withheld Willis’ profit share, and indeed concluded that he had engineered the situation to achieve an outcome most advantageous to him.
He alleged discrimination because the partners questioned his honesty and integrity in applying for and receiving income protection and accused him of misleading his insurers. The judge said any continued questioning was not unfavourable treatment but an attempt on the partners’ part to alleviate their genuinely held concerns that they could be implicated in insurance fraud.
The judge further ruled that Willis was not unfairly excluded from management meetings and not discriminated against in correspondence: at the time the business was said to be in crisis and it was reasonable to communicate this to Willis ‘in a clear and frank way’.
All allegations brought in the second claim were dismissed. A remedy hearing will be held following the admitted discrimination in claim one.
