Z Pekacar v London Borough of Islington & Ors

Facts

The claimant, Mr Z Pekacar, was employed by the London Borough of Islington from 2014 until 2022. The second to eighth, and the tenth and eleventh respondents are current or former employees of the borough; the ninth respondent is a barrister previously instructed by it and took no part in the appeal. The claimant brought thirteen separate claims, the first presented in August 2019 and the last in January 2023, covering a range of allegations predominantly of race, sex and disability discrimination together with claims arising from his dismissal, including whistleblowing and victimisation. His first claim was drafted by solicitors then advising him, and he followed that format — a list of claims with legislative references followed by a narrative account of the chronology and background — in the claims he pleaded himself. At a preliminary hearing on 4 and 5 May 2023, EJ Quill, sitting at Watford Employment Tribunal, spent a day and a half working through the claimant's draft list of issues and the claim forms with the parties in order to settle the list of issues for a final hearing then listed for thirty days. The judge excluded three allegations from the list of issues on the basis that they were not pleaded in the relevant ET1s. The claimant appealed, contending that those allegations shouted out from the documents and that the judge's approach to the list of issues was in any event overly restrictive.