Tribunal: Claimant could have looked up the law surrounding her claim
A paralegal has been ordered to pay costs of just over £20,000 for bringing a “hopeless and misconceived” employment tribunal claim against a law firm.
Employment Judge Jennifer Young in Watford said that Angel Mirembe behaved “unreasonably in pursuing all her claims”, including not engaging with the tribunal over the costs hearing.
The details of Ms Mirembe’s claim against north-west London firm ClaimLion Law and an individual at the firm, Kim Fenton, are not clear as the tribunal did not produce a full ruling of its dismissal.
However, the costs decision is reasoned and this indicates that Ms Mirembe claimed wrongful dismissal, racial discrimination and victimisation.
She was not legally represented in the claim but told the tribunal in evidence at the merits hearing that she has a law degree and did the SQE 1 in 2021 but dropped out before doing the SQE 2. She then started the barrister course in 2023 but did not pass.
Though the SQE 1 did not have an employment law module, and Ms Mirembe only had experience in commercial work as a paralegal, “we considered that the claimant did work in the legal arena and had access to legal resources as she was doing the Bar course at the time she was preparing her case. She could have looked up the law surrounding her claim”.
Judge Young continued: “The claimant had the means to access legal advice to assess the merits of her claim, which in relation to her wrongful dismissal claim was on any analysis hopeless.”
This was “because we found that the claimant knew she was dishonest as to why she was being dismissed”.
The judge said the tribunal was “sympathetic” to Claimlion’s argument that Ms Mirembe had not raised a complaint of discrimination until her dismissal “and therefore knew that her race discrimination and victimisation complaints had no reasonable prospects of success”.
But she went on: “However, we did not make a finding that the claimant was not genuine in the merits hearing, but we do conclude now that based upon the claimant’s legal background she had access to and should have known about the lack of merit of her race discrimination and victimisation claims…
“The claimant had worked for the respondent before and had never complained of race discrimination and had gone back to work for the respondent.”
The claims against Ms Fenton stemmed from her involvement in writing the letter of dismissal to Ms Mirembe. “We conclude that it was utterly unreasonable for the claimant to have named Ms Fenton as a respondent when she knew she was being dishonest.”
The judge recorded that the claimant had sought £50,000 in compensation, having been on a net monthly salary of £1,437.
Ms Mirembe behaved unreasonably in turning down an offer of £2,000 given the weakness of the claim – the firm said it was offered purely on a commercial basis – and then putting forward a counter-offer of £22,000. The firm had also warned her it would seek costs.
In deciding to order costs, Judge Young said: “We would not go so far as to say the claimant was vexatious as we did not have any evidence of an improper motive.”
Claimlion asked the tribunal only to consider its costs up to £20,000 – the most the tribunal can award summarily – and ordered Ms Mirembe to pay £19,655.
It also ordered her to pay a preparation time order of £848 to Ms Fenton.
Claimlion told the tribunal it would take a “sensible approach” to seeking payment.
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