Judge Lewzey says she awarded costs in this case because Ms Keane’s claim had no prospect of success. Miss Keane had to pay Holden Jones £4800 as requested in their letter below.
In all cases Ms Keane demonstrated that the respondents were using discriminatory phrases in their advertising and that these phrases would discriminate against someone in her age group (being over 38 years old). Somehow Judge Lewzey found a legitimate aim for all these instances of discrimination, but the Judge does not tell us what this legitimate aim is.
.
In October 2008, Judge Lewzey wrote to all the respondents in the
Holden Jones advertisement contained the following requirements: Qualification; “Part-qualified studier or newly qualified” and “You will be a part-qualified studier or recently qualified ACCA/CIMA….” Holden Jones selected their candidates on this basic of these criteria and thus their recruitment constituted discrimination on grounds of age. The Tribunal has seen evidence and statistics that proved that "newly qualified" and "recently qualified" would mean someone under 35 years old.
. Anyone who has any knowledge of Finance Roles knows that there is no such thing as a role that is suitable for the newly qualified exclusively. This kind of discrimination can ruin the careers of highly competent accountants who find themselves out of work in their forties and fifties. These people have a great deal to contribute but as prevented from being considered for roles because recruiters continue to use these discriminatory phrases and because recruitment consultants believe outdated nonsense about forty and fifty year olds being unemployable
Judge Lewzey does not explain why the case had no prospect of success and Ms Keane was not aware before she brought this claim that the Employment Tribunal were so adverse to the applying the Age Discrimination Legislation. Ms Keane’s could not have known that the Employment Tribunal would regard this kind of discrimination as OK. If this had been race discrimination and the respondents’ advertisments had said “no black people should apply”, Ms Lewzey would not have dared to say the discrimination was OK.
14 May 2008
The Assistant Secretary to Tribunals
Ground Floor
Victory House
30-434 Kingsway
Dear Sir/Madam
Case No: 2202489/2007
MARGARET ELIZABETH KEANE v INGRAM MAYET & ORS
Application for costs
With reference to the above case, I apply on behalf of the Second Respondent
(Holden Jones Ltd) to the tribunal under rules 38 and 40 for a costs order against the
Claimant.
The Second Respondent was represented by Counsel, Mr A Granville Stafford, under the Bar Public Access Scheme. Mr Granville Stafford’s fees were £4,800 plus VAT making a total of5,640 and I apply for a costs order in this amount. I attach copies of Mr Granville Stafford’s receipted fee notes.
The grounds for making the costs order are that the Claimant has acted vexatiously, abusively or otherwise unreasonably in bringing or conducting the proceedings for the following reasons:
1. The Claimant applied for this job without any realistic or reasonable expectation that she might gel it. She did so with the sole motivation of bringing an Employment Tribunal claim. This is demonstrated by the following factors:-
1.1 The large number of applications she made for jobs she was unsuited for.
1 .2 The fact that she searched for jobs containing the term newly qualified or similar, when she was not.
Continued on page 2....
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1 .3 The fact that she supported those applications with a CV that contains a deliberate falsehood as to the date of her ACCA qualification.
1.4 She acceptance in evidence that she was kind of over qualified’ for the Holden Jones job.
1.5 The large number of Employment Tribunal claims she has brought (13 in this Tribunal and an unknown number in other Tribunals.)
2. It is an abuse of the process of the Tribunal and the purpose of employment legislation to apply for a job with the sole motivation of making money from a Tribunal claim.
3. The Second Respondent understands that most if not all of the seven Respondents who did not contest the final hearing had claims against them withdrawn on the basis they made payments, believed to be between £15,000 and £1 8,000 to the Claimant. It is believed other Respondents in other Tribunals have also made payments to the Claimant, again on entirely economic grounds. It would be wrong in principle to allow the Claimant to retain the benefit of those payments without ordering her to make reparation to those against whom she has brought unsuccessful claims.
Yours faithfully
Gregory Holden (Director) on behalf of Holden Jones Ltd gholden@holdenjones.com
Holden Jones Letter is reproduced below – A lot of what Mr Holden says here is wrong and some of it may be because he was simply mistaken. However Gregory Holden’s deliberate lies to the Tribunal are high-lighted in red – in fact Mr Holden knew that there has been only one settlement in this case for the amount of £3,500 and the other cases were withdrawn when the recruiters agreed to alter their practices. Mr Holden insisted he had was in the right and choose to appear before the Tribunal:
Judge Lewzey says in her letter; “letters concerning costs have been received from the 2nd (Holden Jones) and the 4th respondents (Robert Walters)”, but it seems she did not regard these letters as costs applications at this stage. The tribunal then sent Robert Walters’ application to all the respondents so that they would have a template to apply for costs. Ms Lewzey appears to have abused her position in writing this letter and in her subsequent actions.