Update 08: Employment Tribunal Hearing (14 to 18 March 2022) update #2

It’s been seven weeks since the conclusion of this, five-day, employment tribunal hearing but, as yet, no Judgement has been published. For those unfamiliar with this issue click here to read the backstory

Whether or not this is a typical delay in these circumstances we’re uncertain. However, the Judgment arising from this case’s preliminary hearing of 17 August 2021, at which Nottingham Squash Rackets Club and its directors were so crushingly defeated and discredited, was published within a week — though that was only a one-day hearing in respect of a single issue.
Click here to view/download the preliminary hearing Judgement and Reasons

As this main hearing was public — we were in attendance taking notes — what we can inform you of, in advance of the Judgement publication, is that at the very beginning of the five-day hearing NSRC’s barrister declared to the court that the directors “formally concede”:

• Wrongful dismissal

• Knowledge of disability

• Consequences in relation to discrimination arising from the claimant’s disability

• Subjecting the claimant to unwanted conduct relating to the harassment claim

• Matters relating to the victimisation claim

In these circumstances the generally recognised definition of the verb ‘concede‘ applies — “to admit or agree that something is true after first denying or resisting it”.

It would appear, then, that over the intervening 16 month period — following their ill-considered implementation of staff redundancies, dismissal of Noah Duckworth and the consequential commencement of litigation — the initiating ‘Gang of Four’ directors; Gawain Briars, Steve Payne, Richard O’Connor and Gerry Hargreaves had refused to formally acknowledge their acceptance of any of the above issues until the day of the hearing.

Wrongful dismissal

The directors’ eventual admission that they had wrongfully dismissed Noah Duckworth arose as a direct consequence of, what appears to have been, their ignorance of employment law and failure to seek specialist legal advice.

As is set-out elsewhere the committee meeting minutes of 18 November 2020 strongly suggest that the directors had convinced themselves that Noah Duckworth was not an employee but a casual worker.

ND’s [Noah Duckworth’s] status was again discussed and it was noted that there was no permanent contract, apprenticeship had been completed and therefore employed on a casual basis… “

(Committee meeting minutes 18 November 2020)

Given that Gawain Briars’ (Chairman) occupation is listed at Companies House as ‘Solicitor’ perhaps it’s the case that there was a collective, but apparently misplaced, assumption of competence.

Certainly the directors’ incorrect conclusion that Noah Duckworth was not an employee is consistent with the categorical, but similarly incorrect, statement expressed in the Roger Cockle email of 26 August 2020 which precipitated the hostile ousting of the Nick Duckworth-led Board of Directors and the accession to the board of this “Gang of Four” directors.

Noah [Duckworth], not being an employee and no longer on apprentice terms, is casual labour…”
.

(Roger Cockle 26 August 2020 email to all members)

Click here to view/download the Cockle email

Given that Steve Payne was a signatory to that Cockle email — in addition to our suspicion that Gawain Briars had a significant hand in the drafting of that same Cockle email — it would be reasonable to conclude that the ill-considered and wrongful basis, on which the directors subsequently dismissed Noah Duckworth, had crystallised in their minds well before they even became the ‘Gang of Four’ directors.

Knowledge of disability

Dear reader, we must admit to struggling over where to start with this most astonishingly shocking of admissions. Perhaps it’s worth repeating the definition of the verb ‘concede’ in this context — “to admit or agree that something is true after first denying or resisting it”.

This is not simply a last minute acknowledgement of Noah Duckworth’s disability it’s a last minute admission of having been aware of Noah Duckworth’s disability whilst having, historically, denied awareness of his disability.

How these directors could have believed they’d get away with simply denying knowledge of Noah Duckworth’s disabilities beggars belief given that:

• having become a member in 2006 aged 7 he, quite literally, grew up at the club.

• in 2015 he became an England Squash Foundation Deaf squash ambassador.

• in 2016 he was selected to represent England at the Deaf squash World Championship in South Africa

• in 2018 BBC Sport featured his role as Deaf squash ambassador: Noah’s story (2 minute video)

• in 2019 he became an employee of the club under a business administration apprenticeship — his apprenticeship contract, co-signed by the club manager, detailed his disabilities.

• two of these directors, Richard O’Connor and Gerry Hargreaves, were directors from at least 2015 and, as such, would have played an active part in authorising the apprenticeship and would have had detailed knowledge of the contract.

Given the above is it at all plausible that none of the “Gang of Four” directors had knowledge of Noah Duckworth’s disabilities? A quite absurd proposition.

Having, through their collective ineptness, mired the club in this significant litigation action these directors demonstrated a breathtaking level of crassness in their grubby attempt to extracate themselves from a quagmire of their own manufacture.

To then, quite deliberately, continue to deny knowledge of Noah Duckworth’s disability until the day of the hearing is nothing short of despicable.