A housing association recently instructed us to defend claims for constructive unfair dismissal, direct disability discrimination, discrimination arising from a disability and other payments. The claims were significantly out of time and no compelling reason was submitted why any discretion should be exercised to extend the time limits.
The claimant did not appear to meet the definition of disability under the Equality Act and our client may not have had any knowledge of alleged disability at the material time. The alleged acts did not appear to be discriminatory and had explanations. Since prospects of successfully defending these claims appeared high from the outset and no directions were yet listed creating any time pressure, we recommended applying for a preliminary hearing to address the issues of time points and disability (although we included a commercial settlement offer as an option to resolve the matter in the event our client did not wish to incur any further legal costs).
We put the claimant on notice that should he continue to pursue his claims, we would apply for a costs order against him arguing the claims had no reasonable prospects of success and/or the claimant had acted unreasonably in bringing the claims. We set out the costs incurred to date by our client and offered not to pursue costs against the claimant if he withdrew his claims within seven days. The claimant eventually withdrew his claims one day before the preliminary hearing obtaining a successful outcome for our client.
