Pogust Goodhead to face former legal chief's 'whistleblower' claim

A former Pogust Goodhead partner and chief legal officer is bringing an employment tribunal claim against the firm, claiming unfair dismissal and suffering detriment due to whistleblowing.

Solicitor Christopher Neill appeared remotely today before employment judge Clark in an interim relief hearing.

The firm applied for the hearing to be held in private arguing that the alleged protected disclosures dealt with privileged information. Richard Leiper KC, for PGMBM Law Ltd, said: ‘This is not a situation in which disclosures have been made which could be publicly reported but it is something else which involves a bit of privileged information. The material now being relied on as protected disclosures are privileged information. The protected disclosures and alleged privileged information is one and the same, that is why there is no way of disentangling the hearing,’ Leiper added.

‘It is with great reluctance that anyone makes a submission a hearing has to be in private. This is the position we are forced into in the circumstances and manner of the claimant’s claim.’

Dijen Basu KC, for Neill, said the parties were in agreement that the hearing ought to be in private and it was ‘not possible to ventilate’ the dispute over privilege in a public hearing.

He told the tribunal that matters raised in the interim relief application and in Neill’s claim ‘do touch very closely’ on matters in the ongoing Pan NOx litigation of which Pogust Goodhead is co-leader.

‘Over time less of that will be confidential, that will come out in the court hearings [of the Pan NOx litigation],’ Basu added.

Giving oral judgment, employment judge Clark said: ‘[In this case] legal professional privilege is intrinsically linked with the alleged protected disclosures which the claimant says he made and on which he relies. It is the central part of his claim. It seems to the tribunal it would be impossible to make determinations about the likely success of the claimant establishing he made protected disclosures without referring to evidence which is arguably legally privileged.

‘The best way this can be achieved, balancing the right of parties and the public interest in open justice and without offending the interest of open justice is addressing the question of admissibility around the question of privilege around the claimant’s protected disclosures…with [the] interim relief hearing taking place shortly after that.’

The judge said the delay of the interim relief hearing would ‘impact both parties…particularly the claimant who is without income, but the delay is not an inordinate delay’.

She added: ‘I appreciate the interim relief hearing should only be postponed in special circumstances but the tribunal considers preserving the possibility that the interim relief hearing could be conducted in public would amount to such a special circumstance.’

A private hearing on the alleged whistleblowing and privileged material and a potentially public interim hearing were listed for early next year.