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Northern Ireland
Timbo v Greenwich Council For Racial Equality (Sex Discrimination) [2012] UKEAT 0160_12_0210
Published on: 05/10/2012
Issues Covered:
Discrimination
Article Authors The main content of this article was provided by the following authors.
Background The appellant employee appealed against the decision of an Employment Tribunal to dismiss her race and sex discrimination claims against the respondent employer part way through the hearing. 41The employer applied to strike out the appellant‟s claims arguing that the hearing should be quashed as the complaints exemplified dual discrimination i.e. claims of discrimination on two levels, both race and sex. Such claims are not provided for prior to the Equality Act 2010 and so the claim was null. The employer also argued that the employee had no substantive evidence on which to build her claim. The tribunal granted the employer‟s application, describing it as a submission of no case to answer and found the employee‟s credibility to be flawed. The employee argued that the tribunal was wrong in deciding not to hear evidence from both parties. The employer counter argued that the employee‟s evidence was so unreliable that it would be futile to include in the hearing and so the case in its entire should be dismissed.The appellant succeeded in her appeal. The employer's application was made expressly under the Employment Tribunals (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) Regulations 2004 Sch.1 para.18(7)(b) to strike out the appellant's claims on the grounds that they were flawed. In order to determine whether there was dual discrimination in this instance and whether the law prior to the 2010 Act allowed for such discrimination, the evidence from both parties needed to be heard and addressed. In assessing the striking out application, the tribunalrealised the importance of the employee‟s credibility as a witness. However the tribunal proceeded to make inappropriate presumptions concerning their creditability. The tribunal should have heard and evaluated the crucial core of disputed facts. The tribunal erred in law by prematurely deciding to dismiss the hearing and conclude that a witness's evidence must be rejected in its entirety even if there was no evidence to challenge it. The tribunal too readily dismissed the employee‟s evidence and so the appeal was allowed. http://bit.ly/Vo1bqx

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Disclaimer The information in this article is provided as part of Legal Island's Employment Law Hub. We regret we are not able to respond to requests for specific legal or HR queries and recommend that professional advice is obtained before relying on information supplied anywhere within this article. This article is correct at 05/10/2012
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