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By Michael Scutt, 29/01/2010 10:01 am

Truly I can see the future. A few weeks ago I wrote on this blog about a website run by Gordon Turner and Damien McCarthy, the two employment lawyers who set up www.serial-litigants.com, designed to keep a check on those claimants who repeatedly bring claims against different employers (or potential employers) for the same thing – usually discrimination claims.  I welcomed the scheme but thought that it might hit problems with the Data Protection Act, which governs what information can be held on people and how it can be used.  Then, lo and behold, I received this email from Gordon Turner a few days ago;

Dear Michael

 ALL GOOD IDEAS MUST BE SHOT DOWN

 …or so it seems. As you predicted, our service is to be challenged, although it is not clear why because (a) we have no database and (b) have already taken and implemented advice from the ICO.

 We are meeting an MP on Monday to see if a helpful EDM can be set down in response, namely to properly debate the degree to which serial litigants are (or may be) a ‘big problem’.

 With one claimant alone having brought well in excess of 50 claims (without ever showing up to hearings) our concern is that the problem or serious threat of a problem by serial litigants is neither audited or monitored in any way.

 There must be a way of striking a balance between the policy issues of dispensing with the Register and the needs of the public and employers.

 Regards,

Gordon Turner

 The EDM (Early Day Motion) will probably not be debated; most aren’t.  EDMs are a mechanism whereby backbench MPs can promote issues and raise awareness.  Although this EDM does criticise the abuse of the system by serial litigants, it does not suggest a practical alternative and that is regrettable.  This is the text of it;

I don’t think the reputation of the Oracle at Delphi is in too much danger as it was always likely that a challenge to this website would arise.  Serial-Litigants.com works by searching the Register of Decisions held by the Employment Tribunal.  If the same person keeps cropping up time after time this is then material for cross-examination at the final hearing or, more likely, for a strike out application early on. The idea is that when a Claimant is faced with evidence that he/she has been submitting multiple clams his credibility will be so badly damaged that no Tribunal would give the allegations credence. In my earlier post I said that this scheme deserves to succeed and I still think that. Some sort of safeguard is necessary for preventing vexatious litigants from making a fast buck out of the justice system – in the worst cases putting in multiple claims with the aim of forcing the employer into making a financial settlement is no better than extortion.  What is missing from this debate so far is any sort of statistical analysis on how significant a problem it is.  The EDM states that it “does not accept that these individuals are a big problem”:  does anyone know of any figures out there? Perhaps Gordon Turner or Damian McCarthy could respond on that?

Where the EDM might be on stronger ground is in saying that the website could be used by employers for screening out job candidates who had previously taken legitimate claims against their previous employers.  That is a concern in just the same way as the blacklist maintained by The Consulting Association on construction workers and the Retail Consortium’s register on shop-workers was.  I can see that the website could be misused in this fashion but, in the bigger picture, how many employers are going to pay the fee (currently £99 per search, although temporarily reduced to £50) each time they employ someone?  I think it unlikely that many employers will do that. Which is the bigger risk: serial litigants ripping off innocent businesses or honest employees being screened out by unscrupulous employers?    How else can this problem be tackled if not by a search based system?

Well, I can think of two options. One way would be to introduce Tribunal fees upon issuing proceedings, in the same way that is required when commencing a claim before the County or High Court.  The level of fees can be swingeing though, especially in the bigger claims and that is because (laughable) government policy for some years now has been to make the court system self-financing by its users.  Hence you have to pay a large fee even if you want to cough in court.  Employment Tribunals do not require a fee to be paid and the system is “free” at point of delivery.  Introducing large issue fees might stop the scamsters but it would also prevent genuine claimants from getting access to justice and would be a political non-starter.

The second option would be to introduce “costs-shifting” in the ET.  This occurs in the civil courts and means that the winner gets his costs paid by the losing party. In ETs it is very unusual for the Employment Judge to award costs against a party, so the general rule is that each party bears its own legal costs win or lose.  It is this rule that makes it attractive for serial litigants to “try it on” because they know many employers will pay up a “nuisance settlement” sooner or later to avoid the case going to a full hearing because they won’t want to incur legal expenses that they won’t recover from the Claimant.  That is why serial litigants are performing a type of extortion, in my view. 

The problem is in identifying the serial litigants. Someone who has brought fifty claims against fifty different employers ought to be a surefire candidate; but what about someone with ten, or five, or (worryingly) two claims?  An employee who has had the misfortune to be involved in previous ET proceedings is not prevented from bringing his/her claim by this website.  It is for the Respondent (the employer) to adduce the evidence and make of it what it will: similarly the employee can give evidence to explain.  Most employers would probably be keen for costs shifting to be introduced into the ET system, but I can’t see it happening any time soon.  Instead the serial-litigants search system offers a practical option accessible by all.  I don’t have shares in it, I don’t know Gordon Turner or Damian McCarthy (although I do instruct other barristers in his chambers) but I do think it deserves to succeed.  No one is well served by allowing serial litigants to abuse the system, least of all genuine employees with honest claims.  In his email to me Gordon Turner  writes that he is seeking to drum up support from a sympathetic MP to place an EDM in response.  I look forward to news of developments.

 I would be very interested to hear from anyone – lawyer, employer, or MP – who has any information on how widespread this problem is, or any anecdotes on serial litigants (on an anonymised basis please).  

Related posts:

Serial Litigants Beware

Blacklists to be blacklisted?

A Rant about Data Protection

Comments (4)

By Michael Scutt, 25/11/2009 10:04 am

Take a look at this article from The Daily Telegraph.  A good idea in principle but I’m wondering about the Data Protection issues involved, as well as the subsequent satellite litigation that would undoubtedly result.  Does anyone remember the blacklist of “difficult” employees compiled by The Consulting Association (see my previous post on the subject here)?  Or the National Staff Dismissal Register (see here) ? 

I can accept that there is a world of difference between a register kept by employers and passed on to others to identify those employees who stand up for their rigths and those people who bring many different (and fabricated) claims – but how do you differentiate between the two in practice?  I suppose we should bear in mind Oscar Wilde’s aphorism (albeit paraphrased) “To have one Discrimination claim is unfortunate, to have 34 is downright suspicious”.  Preventing someone from asserting their legal rights is not something to be undertaken lightly. 

It’s interesting that the Employment Tribunal isn’t keen to get involved and I can see why.  These serial litigants might turn their hand to defamation or judicial review instead of discrimination claims. Tribunals are wary of awarding costs against litigants and they certainly aren’t going to relish banning individuals from bringing claims. Since 1993 they have had the power to make a “restriction of proceedings order”, but they are very rare.   The way forward is shown  by Her Majesty’s Courts Service, which runs all the civil and criminal courts (but not the Tribunals) in the country and which maintains a list of vexatious litigants on its website (www.hmcourtsservice.gov.uk).  However, the people listed on there will have been declared a vexatious litigant in proceedings and thus there has been a judicial finding.  If Mr Turner’s idea is to get off the ground (and it deserves to) he will need the ET to be more robust in making  “restriction of proceedings orders” and then publishing that list. 

Comments (0)

By michaelscutt, 15/05/2009 9:00 am

I’ve written before about the National Staff Dismissal Register (NSDR) in the Retail Sector and the blacklist published by The Consulting Association (TCA) in the construction industry.  The former is a joint venture between Action Against Business Crime (a consortium formed between leading retailers and the Home Office), the latter a database compiled by a private company that then sold details to about 40 leading construction companies.  News comes this week that the government is planning to introduce regulations to proscribe blacklists used by companies to identify Trade Union members and thus not employ them.  The TCA blacklist appears to have identified trade union members as trouble – e.g “ex shop steward definite problems” and similar.  The government thinks, rightly, that potential employees should not be discriminated against because of their Trade Union membership.

Back in January the House of Lords ruled that care workers accused (note accused, not convicted) of harming children or vulnerable adults and placed as a result on a provisional blacklist could sue for infringement of their rights under the Human Rights Act.  It was estimated by the Royal College of Nursing that there were 5,500 names on the list.  The particular harm with that blacklist was that the people on it were undergoing investigation and could not work in the months it took for the investigatory and appeals process to be completed. Compensation claims will undoubtedly result.

All seems to have gone very quiet on the NSDR, which was a system retailers put in place to notify other members of staff dismissed for theft, fraud, forgery and criminal damage.  Again, no formal criminal investigation or conviction is required, leaving open the possibility that a malicious employer could prevent an employee getting back into work just by placing an entry in the register.   Safeguards are said to exist and all members have to agree to a strict code of practice, but I am struggling to see any fundamental difference between the NSDR and the TCA type blacklist – other than in the latter case the government might be trying to appease its friends in the Trade Union movement.  On the other hand the government is prepared to promote a scheme in the retail sector which surely infringes Data Protection legislation.  Is this yet another example of the government’s rather oppressive attitude towards civil liberties?

Comments (2)

By michaelscutt, 13/03/2009 11:30 am

The recent uproar over the revelation that a company called The Consulting Association (TCA) maintained a blacklist of “problem” employees which it then passed on to construction companies, reminded me of the National Staff Dismissal Register set up in the retail industry last year and which I wrote about in these pages last October.  In that case Action Against Business Crime (AABC), a consortium formed between the Home Office (!!!)  and the British Retail Consortium, set up a scheme to share information between potential employers of details of employees dismissed for offences of dishonesty, but not convicted in the criminal courts of wrongdoing.  In other words if an employer dismissed an employee for theft or fraud they would then place that person’s details on the NSDR and thus make it much harder for them to get alternative work, at least within the retail sector.  At the time it was claimed that this didn’t breach the Data Protection Act (DPA), which claim I still find rather surprising.

What is so very different about TCA’s activities?   The Information Commissioner says that they have committed a serious breach of the DPA and could be prosecuted for failing to register itself as a data holder under the DPA.  The BBC reports that information passed on by TCA to its subscribers was highly prejudicial and personal, such as “Irish ex-Army, bad egg” and “ex-shop-steward, definite problems” and included people who had raised health and safety issues on construction sites and union membership.  These are all issues which are covered by legislation designed to protect workers.  For instance, if a worker is dismissed for belonging to a Union it will be an automatically unfair dismissal, as it will if someone is dismissed for raising health and safety issues.  Anti-discrimination laws prevent a person being discriminated against on grounds of nationality – and that covers recruitment of staff as well as not subjecting them to detriment when actually in employment.  What the TCA is alleged to have done is more extreme than the NSDR scheme, but the principal is the same – personal information is being disseminated about workers who have no knowledge of the disclosure or right of redress and without any safeguards in place on the accuracy of the information. These types of scheme need to be banned: they are a far more insidious threat to our personal liberty than the ubiquitous CCTV cameras that watch our movements wherever we go. 

“Usefully Employed” also posted an interesting piece on this very issue earlier this week – see the link to his blog on my blogroll.

This article will appear in the “Docklands” and “Peninsula” newspapers week commencing 16th March. 

Comments (2)

By michaelscutt, 13/03/2009 10:59 am

A rather alarming new initiative was reported last week: the creation of the National Staff Dismissal Register, by an organisation called Action Against Business Crime (AABC), a consortium formed between the Home office and the British Retail Consortium.  It is a database for employers to share details on those staff dismissed (but not necessarily convicted in the criminal courts) for offences of dishonesty; e.g. theft, forgery, damage to company property and so on. According to the AABC’s own press release the register seeks to create a central register to cover those employees not convicted or cautioned for criminal offences. It appears that it is aimed at the retail industry at the moment, although it will almost certainly spread if successful.  It will go live this month.  Apparently it is not in contravention of the Data Protection Act.

This strikes me as being a very dangerous development.  What safeguards are there for employees placed upon it?    It means that unscrupulous employers, or those with a grudge against a former employee could put an employee’s name on the register and effectively stop them getting work in the future.  What about the old adage of being innocent until proved guilty?  This scheme is aimed at those people who haven’t been cautioned or prosecuted and thus haven’t had the opportunity to defend themselves.  It must also raise issues under the Human Rights Act.  I don’t condone workplace crime by any means, but this intrusive scheme can’t be the right way to address the issue.

This post first appeared in the “Docklands” and “Peninsula” newspapers last October.