How to fight a Serial Claimant

Introduction

In some respects Serial Claimants deserve sympathy.

Unless they are out and out villains, their motivation, as in this case, may have a core of integrity notwithstanding the distortion in their thinking that justifies pursuing manufactured or fraudulent claims.

This Claimant was able to pursue an application without ever having been employed by the Respondent. The issues of discrimination applies, therefore, to pre-recruitment and recruitment just as much it does to the workforce that an employer already employs.

Case summary

In this case Gary McKetty was representing the Respondent, a private school for girls.

The Claimant presented an application to the Employment Tribunals complaining of race discrimination on the part of the school to which he had applied to become head of mathematics.

Shrewdly, the Claimant requested feedback from the school with regards to his application, on receipt of which he submitted an application to the ET on the grounds that his application was refused because of his ethnicity, namely that he was not a white European.

The Claimant argued that he was more than qualified for the role and had more than 20 years experience teaching mathematics. As will be shown below, this was part of his ingenious money-making scheme.

At first glance, this appeared, potentially, to be case of direct racial discrimination.

However, investigations revealed that the Claimant had sent over 150 applications to private schools through England.

Furthermore, it is was uncovered that the Claimant had submitted numerous applications to ETs that were withdrawn following commercial settlements which earned the Claimant, on average, around £3,000.00. Infact, he had already settled 15 cases by the time he was forced to attend an ET in person.

At the ET, the Claimant was cross-examined. The real story that emerged was that the Claimant had never taught mathematics, that he had stolen the identity of person who had died, and that he was using a copy of the deceased person’s degree to fraudulently prove his own qualifications.

The Claimant was ordered to pay the legal costs for the Respondent amounting to £1,169.13, at the hearing. He was also ordered to attend over 20 hearings when other Respondents were likewise applying for costs against him. Each time he lost hopelessly and allegedly developed a heart condition and swelling to his tongue!

The Claimant promptly withdrew over 90 other applications and went into hiding as he was being hounded by the press.

Comment

The implications of this case are depressing.

Numerous Respondents just wanted the problem to go away. They did not question the potentially sinister motives of the Claimant. They simply saw, I suggest, the threat that they could be open to the kind of complaint alleged by the Claimant, thereby, unintentionally, implying that perhaps the complaint did have substance.

Then we have the law firm that supported him in many of his ET applications. It is hard to imagine that they did not know that the Claimant was presenting manufactured and fraudulent claims. With a sharp eye to their own preservation, they came off the ET record when the Claimant was forced to attend hearings in person.

Then we have the behaviour of the Claimant. He saw himself as a hero. He described himself as a Subcontinent Robin Hood!

He gave the impression that it was his way of getting back at the racists and bigots in society that encourage glass ceilings.