After having dealt with the UK employment tribunals for six years, I have a deep distrust of them which is wholly justified and evidenced even by the online judgements in my case. Even though they may have excluded evidence and distorted or omitted facts, anyone who bothers to analyse the online judgements can see through the relentless campaign one employer started, involving other former employers and their insurance-paid lawyers who had connections with the judiciary. If this sounds extreme, I assure you it’s not. What is extreme is the facts and how they have treated me. My conclusion about what they have done to me is only a mild opinion based on facts and my experience
Let’s start with the government websites where employment tribunal and employment appeal tribunal judgements are published:
https://www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal-decisions
https://www.gov.uk/employment-appeal-tribunal-decisions
Tribunal judgements have been published since 2017, while Appeal Tribunal judgements apparently started in 2015. The fact that judgements are published online is important. Of course, not all judgements are published online, which means this is only part of the picture.
In my experience, the fact that the judgements are published online meant they were used heavily against claimants, especially unrepresented ones, and ruined many lives. From experience, I know that these judgements contain an enormous amount of negative untruths; in my case, all of them were about me. It is clear that they have been designed to harm me and to protect the employers. When the employer’s conduct is so awful or embarrassing to them, they even exclude the judgment from the register.
Also, the language used is heavily biased against the claimants. I have ample proof of how facts were so distorted that I was framed in a negative light despite the fact I was heavily victimised. Because of these untruths in the judgements, I have had to make numerous complaints and appeal and have been able to prove some of them to be lies.
Judges, by definition, are expected to have integrity and intellectual honesty. No one would expect them to use an online judgement to ruin the life of a member of the public by distorting facts. But this is precisely what is happening, and it is incredibly scary and disappointing. They know this power very well and misuse it, leading to many claimants having to defend their reputation and trying to defend themselves against the judiciary and the employer’s lawyers instead of dealing with what happened during their employment and with dignity. My point is that the judges know they can ruin someone’s life with a judgement, and they use it. Therefore, I call these websites the ‘graveyard of lies’.
I believe there are some judges who are fighting to get the system fair, but they are few and far between. The impact of this unfair system on individuals like myself is devastating. I have lost six years fighting for my basic rights while being told again and again that I am not entitled to them. I have lost years of my life, income, and it has affected my general well-being. The treatment I have received has been callous and intentionally harmful.
The employment tribunal hearings were not recorded at all when I brought my first claim in 2018. Here is the link to the decisions that resulted:
I was both shocked and scared that they are not recorded. At a hearing in November 2018, the judge told my niece, who had come as my witness, that she wasn’t needed and told her to go, leaving me on my own. The employers, named as Steve Griffiths and Melanie Griffiths in this judgement, their barrister James Dawson (who was later revealed to have been a part-time employment judge), and I were left in the room.
Ms Melanie Mareuge-Lejeune, also known as Melanie Griffiths, refused to leave the room when the judge tried to get her out because she had a newborn baby with her. In this hearing, she hopped back and forth with the baby hanging on her chest, aggressively tapping on pages and showing the barrister what to say. The barrister himself was extremely aggressive and said things that justified and praised the employer’s actions that were essentially encouragement to commit fraudulent acts, i.e., she tried to convince me to call Which? and pretend to be her. Mr Griffiths was also aggressive when talking, and at some point, they were all talking at the same time with raised voices.
Mareuge-Lejeune kept staring at me, made exaggerated gestures when I was looking at specific pages in my bundle, and was happy when I couldn’t drink from the water on the table because the glass was dirty. To be honest, these are nothing compared to other parts of the litigation, i.e., she and the other set of employers reported me to the police dozens of times with disgraceful false allegations, made allegations about her own family member which were disrespectful and potentially false, submitted numerous health reports to emotionally blackmail everyone while acting extremely aggressively and illicitly. These points were communicated in later communications and following litigation, but you won’t see any of them in the judgements. Over time, judges used how I had been treated against me because I was pointing out the abusive nature of the proceedings.
My criticism of how the tribunals operated was met with more judicial lies and attacks on me. The Employment Appeal Tribunal records the hearings themselves, but you would have to get a transcript, which they know is expensive, so litigants are not likely to obtain them. At some of the hearings, the judges accepted the unlawful parts of the litigation, but in the judgments, they either omitted them or denied having that opinion, knowing I am not likely to get any help unless they authorise it and cannot prove any of these events unless they provide a transcript of the hearing.
In Employment Appeal Tribunal hearings, I was also abused by both the judges and, on one occasion, by Ms Mareuge-Lejeune after the judge simply invited her to be abusive. He later lied in the judgement by using the term ‘hostile behaviour’ about me when it was clear there was no such thing. When I complained, the president of the EAT said the judge didn’t say it, but it was the employer.
No, the employer used racist arguments and was extremely aggressive; she did not say this about me. Even if she had, the judge had no right to use it as if it were a fact. The same judge labelled the employer’s demands that I pay them food receipts as ‘family-related evidence’. So you can see how an employer’s unlawful and embarrassing demands can be labelled as ‘evidence’, but I am falsely alleged to have acted in a hostile manner even when I am being victimised in the very same courtroom.
The employer argued that the court should protect her job after an earlier judge said she had conducted a ruse to discredit me and she was found to be unreasonable. The judge arranged for the judgement to be published online within a week, while I waited another half a year for a judgement in my own appeal. Of course, my appeal judgement was not published online. But they always have a good explanation and said it was because his judgement for the employer’s appeal was reserved and that reserved judgments get published.
My point is that we don’t have access to the recordings, and the judgements are manipulated in terms of what they contain and whether they are published online. And mind you, on the first claim, they didn’t even use the employer’s actual legal names, and the Employment Tribunals don’t check employer names. In my claims, you can see that quite a few different versions of the names are used for this set of employers. These were done readily and with no legal arguments. I don’t think the tribunal would ever do this for a claimant. The case law regarding anonymity and whether a judgement is published online is heavily protective of employers and biased against employees. I will give specific examples of this case law in another post.
The reason why the names were important is because apparently, the employers wanted common names on the judgements as a tactic to distance themselves from them. They later argued many times that their names are too unique and important. They even argued that names are private information and should not be published on judgements. These are clearly incorrect and, in fact, bizarre arguments, but they were ignored for many years, leading to more unreasonable conduct on their part.
I do believe that employers are treated with favouritism at the tribunal because they either have good insurance to pay the lawyers or because they have the ability to pay even if they are not paying now. They also happen to be repeat customers.
A significant number of employment judges are also self-employed barristers, which means they work from both sides of the bench. What I can see on their chambers’ websites is often boasting about their judicial duties. If I were a customer, I would see their role as a part-time judge as a promise to win. Of course, those part-time judges also have colleagues who appear in front of them when in court. Imagine what kind of relationships and networks this could result in. Surely this whole thing is a conflict of interest. I am sure some of those part-time judges would strive to keep their different roles separate and don’t let one affect the other, but again, this type of judge would be a rare exception.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that the impact of this unfair system extends far beyond my personal experience. It affects anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation, fighting for their basic rights against a biased and manipulative system. The emotional toll, financial losses, and the sense of injustice can be overwhelming and life-altering. It is crucial that we address these issues and work towards creating a more transparent, accountable, and fair employment tribunal system that truly serves the interests of justice for all parties involved.
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