Discrimination – Equality and Human Rights Commission – Lay assessors

S Deman v Commission for Equality and Human Rights and others: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justices Sedley, Moses): 6 November 2010

The appellant (X) appealed against a decision that a judge was not required to sit with lay assessors to determine an application by the respondent commission to strike out X’s claim for racial discrimination and victimisation and a decision to strike out X’s claim.

X was of Indian ethnic origin. He had applied to the commission for it to support the 17 cases he wished to bring against academic institutions which had not appointed him to posts for which he had applied. While X acknowledged that the commission had provided him with legal assistance and representation to an extent, he commenced proceedings against it, alleging that it had repeatedly failed to support his litigation and had treated him differently and worse than it had treated or would have treated a person of another ethnicity. The commission applied to strike out X’s claim against it. The judge heard the submissions and discharged the attending two lay assessors. In doing so he considered section 67(4) of the Race Relations Act 1976 and found that it did not apply as the proceedings were under the CPR rather than the act. He heard the strike-out application on his own and granted it. X submitted that (1) where one party clearly did not consent to the judge dispensing with the assessors, the court was obliged to sit with the assessors and, if it did not do so, it was unlawfully constituted; (2) there were factors which were or were capable of being material from which a tribunal could conclude that, on the balance of probabilities, the commission had committed an unlawful act of discrimination and the refusal of more assistance and representation was the product of institutional racism in the form of bias against Indian applicants.

Held: (1) The application might have been made by virtue of the CPR but the entirety of X’s claim lay under the act. Section 67(4) was not the language of constitutive jurisdiction, laying down when a court was and was not duly constituted. It was more nearly the language of adjudicative jurisdiction, spelling out how a court was to act in determining certain issues. Therefore, where lay assessors were capable of assisting, namely where they could contribute ‘special knowledge and experience of problems connected with relations between persons of different racial groups’, the judge was required to sit with them. Where they could not make such a contribution he was not required to sit with them (see paragraph 12 of judgment).(2) The factors which X relied upon were mostly failures of the commission to provide information or to respond to letters or requests. The demands were part of a barrage of intemperate correspondence to which no organisation, especially one which was publicly funded, could be expected to divert its resources. Further, the claim of institutional racism was based on bare assertion and the judge was fully entitled to decide that the time had come, after X had had many opportunities to put a coherent case together, to call a halt to it. Therefore, the striking out of X’s claim involved no error of law, Anyanwu v South Bank Students Union [2001] UKHL 14, [2001] 1 WLR 638 considered (paragraphs 23, 26-27).

Appeal dismissed.

John Hendy QC, Ghazan Mahmood (instructed by Bevans) for the appellant; Robin Allen QC, Daniel Dyal (instructed by in-house solicitor) for the respondents.