Paralegal loses disability discrimination claim brought against law firm after being late for 7 of his 9 days employment

The Claimant, Mr. M Nabeel Ud-Din, brought a claim against his former employer CJCH Solicitors, a Welsh law firm after being dismissed in 2019 for his attitude and poor-time keeping.

Mr. Ud-Din was hired in July 2019 as a Compliance and Enforcement Paralegal within the Anti-Piracy and Compliance Team. CJCH Solicitors is a firm of solicitors operating in South Wales and it employs around 150 staff across a number of offices, including one in Cardiff.

Employment Judge Brace noted Mr. Ud-Din had an impressive and varied education, as reflected in his CV, and within this CV he set out a list of what he considered to be his personal qualities which included “good time management” and “coping with demanding circumstances” and “working with people”.

As the law firm was so impressed with the resume, Tim Hartland, the firm’s Managing Director was the one to interview Mr. Ud-Din.

During his first week, which was his designated week of training, Mr. Ud-Din was between 2 and 20 minutes late every day and the following week, prior to the dismissal, he was late 3 out of the 4 mornings.

On his third working day with the firm, Mr. Ud-Din asked whether he could take his lunch at 11.30am so that he could attend a court hearing. He stated to the Tribunal that he had made it clear he was attending his own eviction hearing. Mr. Hartland and Alison Farrar, Solicitor and Operations Manager for the firm, both gave evidence that they did not know the specific reason for the court hearing.

Instead of returning to work after an hour as requested, Mr. Ud-Din did not in fact return until 1:45pm, some 2 hours and 15 minutes later. Ms. Farrar spoke to Mr Ud-Din upon his return and warned him that he needed to improve his time-keeping as she was aware he had been late on a number of occasions already.

While Mr. Ud-Din was not late on the Friday of that week, Ms. Farrar received verbal reports from those working with him, including those that had been training him, of concerns regarding his behaviour.

Similar concerns were being voiced to Mr. Hartland who gave evidence to the Tribunal, that this was a ‘red flag’ for the partners and they had discussed the concerns that had been raised by three valued and trusted members of staff at the firm.

On the morning of 24^th July 2019, Mr. Ud-Din attended work late once again and was immediately asked to meet Ms. Farrar. At that meeting, Mr. Ud-Din was provided with a letter dismissing him with immediate effect.

Whilst the letter provided to him did not contain the explicit reason for his dismissal, Ms, Farrar explained to him that his dismissal was due to his poor time-keeping and the disruptive impact that his attitude and behaviour was having on the team.

Later that day, Mr. Ud-Din submitted an appeal which was found to be the first time he had made any reference to his disability. The Tribunal found that Mr. Ud-Din was disabled at the material time due to his ADHD, however he failed to demonstrate that he was also disabled due to insomnia, depression or a personality disorder despite his assertions otherwise.

The Tribunal said CJCH Solicitors could not reasonably have been expected to know that Mr. Ud-Din had ADHD and was disabled at the time of dismissal.

It accepted the evidence of both Mr. Hartland and Ms. Farrar that Mr. Ud-Din had not told them that he was disabled or that he lived with the impairments that he relied on to bring the claims of disability discrimination, whether ADHD or otherwise, and the Tribunal did not accept Mr. Ud-Din’s evidence that he had made it clear to the firm in his interview of his disabilities and nothing in his CV or conduct would have put them on notice.

As a result, the disability discrimination claims against CJCH Solicitors were not well-founded and are dismissed. Ian Abel, Head of Employment at Oakwood Solicitors comments:

“It’s good to see common sense prevailing, and this was clearly the right decision by the Employment Tribunal. For anyone to try and argue that the reason for their dismissal was something that was unknown to their employer at the time of the dismissal (and only raised later on appeal) is misconceived to say the least.

“The biggest disappointment here is that this is a member of the legal profession, trying to make this inevitably unsuccessful argument. Further, the Claimant’s argument that lateness alone should have put his employer on notice of a very specific disability is quite frankly ridiculous.

“No employer can be expected to guess or speculate about its employee’s disabilities, and if this case does show anything it is that if someone wishes to rely on an alleged disability, they must make this clear to their employer.

“A final and surprising point to note was the Respondent did not attempt to pursue costs against the Claimant for running such a vexatious and misconceived claim.”

Further reading

Workplace discrimination, harassment and bullying – Oakwood Solicitors

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