US litigation giant Quinn Emanuel has been ordered to pay more than £8,000 in costs over its ‘unreasonable’ approach to disclosure in an employment claim.

The employment tribunal had ordered that disclosure be completed by a date in May last year after Luke Decker brought claims against the firm for disability discrimination, public interest disclosure and unfair dismissal. At a further hearing before the London Central tribunal in November, both parties accepted they were in breach of that order.

The firm and a designated member Paul Baker, both named as respondents to the claim, argued that some of the material to be disclosed was privileged and needed to be issued with conditions. The tribunal heard that, nine days before the disclosure deadline, the respondents wrote to Decker’s solicitors asking for an extension. He offered a shorter-than-requested extension which was not agreed.

Then in October, Quinn Emanuel applied for the claim to be struck out on the grounds that Decker had failed to comply with orders and not actively pursued his claim.

The application was taken no further but it raised the wider question of disclosure, with the parties then exchanging a series of letters arguing about related issues prior to the preliminary hearing before Employment Judge David Hughes.

At the hearing, Decker submitted that the respondents had behaved unreasonably through ‘wholesale’ non-disclosure, the initial pursuit of a groundless strike-out application and a ‘needlessly repetitive approach to correspondence’. 

The firm said it had offered to discuss safeguards around privilege issues which would have allowed for sensible dialogue. It had considered the strike-out only following a lengthy period of non-engagement by Decker, it was submitted.

The judge said attempts to have the case struck out were unreasonable and an 'excessive response’, particularly given that the firm knew it was in breach of the disclosure order. He added that the approach to disclosure had also been ‘unreasonable’: the firm had not raised any issue about privilege when the order was made and instead waited a ‘significant’ period of time to bring it up.

‘To sit on something that should have been evident, for a period of months, was also unreasonable,’ added the judge.

Decker, whose role in the firm was not specified in the ruling, sought £20,000 costs but this was reduced to account for his own unreasonable approach. The firm and Baker were jointly and severally ordered to pay £8,371 towards the costs of the November hearing.