Complaints brought by a solicitor in the employment tribunal against the regulator and a legal journalist have been dismissed.
The practitioner, named in the judgment as I Laing, brought a complaints of direct discrimination because of race and sex, harassment related to race and sex, and victimisation as a result of protected acts, in relation to investigations by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. He also brought claims against legal journalist Neil Rose, who reported judgments in Laing’s separate employment tribunal claim against Bury and Bolton Citizens’ Advice Bureau. Laing claimed that Rose was working with the SRA.
Laing made a formal complaint to Rose and threatened legal action. Rose unpublished the articles, with no admission of liability or inaccuracy. He complained to the SRA about Laing's ‘extremely aggressive approach’.
In a written judgment, regional employment judge Franey, sitting in Manchester, said he was ‘satisfied’ that Laing could not establish that Rose was ‘an agent for the SRA’ and ‘there was no basis’ on which Rose could be liable to Laing under the Equality Act.
Dismissing the claims against Rose, the judge said: ‘In all the material supplied by the claimant there is nothing that showed that Mr Rose was acting on behalf of the SRA or authorised to do so. A regulatory body can gather evidence without making a complainant or witness its agent. There is no reasonable prospect of the tribunal finding that Mr Rose could be liable to the claimant as agent for the SRA.’
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Considering the claims against the SRA, the judge said: ‘Of overwhelming significance, I concluded, was the nature of the complaints against the claimant made by Mr Rose in February 2023.
‘The correspondence from the claimant…made accusations of bad faith, defamation and falsehood, demanding compensation and a written apology, in ways which were obviously inappropriate given that the articles were just a fair and accurate report of judicial proceedings and therefore protected by qualified privilege under section 14 of the Defamation Act 1996.
‘Despite the assertions made by the claimant to the contrary, those matters plainly warranted an investigation.‘ The judge found Laing had ‘no reasonable prospect of showing that the SRA was influenced in any material way by his race, sex or earlier protected acts in deciding to institute the investigation and pursue it’.
Striking out the claims in their entirety, the judge found there was ‘nothing which suggests any link at all between [Laing’s] protected characteristics and the treatment in question, or his protected acts and the treatment in question’.
