Ouch!

by Philip

This case is a reminder that Tribunals do have a costs stick and when it is used it can cause quite a blow to the losing party’s finances.

In this case the employee lost her case of Race Discrimination and ended up with a costs award against her as she had conducted herself unreasonably and parts of the case were misconceived.

In the 2004 rules a Tribunal does have discretion to take account a person’s means in determining whether a costs award should be made and the amount.

In this case the wininng party’s legal costs were £67000.00, the losing party’s declared capital was £40,000.00. The award of £67,000 was still made subject to assessment by a costs judge. So losing that case potentially, subject to a further exercise of discretion, has wiped out the employee’s capital.

Ouch indeed!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Employment Tribunal Procedure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.