Ignored solicitor did not suffer age discrimination, tribunal finds

A solicitor whose emails were ignored by her firm was not the subject of age or sex discrimination, an employment tribunal has found.

The claimant, listed as Ms J Williams, said her emails had not met a response from her employer Sinclairs Law because it was thought she was 'winding down' to retirement and/or she was a woman.

The firm said the allegations were ill-founded and this was a case of ‘straight inadvertence’, with no intention to deliberately ignore Williams.

The tribunal at Cardiff heard that family specialist Williams, who had been with Sinclairs since 2010, had wanted to clarify her position after the firm’s family legal aid contract expired in late 2021.

She wrote twice seeking HR documentation and highlighting that she had not been able to carry out some billing due to a lack of secretarial support. She estimated that the inability to bill claims meant she was owed up to £40,000 and the firm around £50,000.

But the emails’ recipient, deputy chief executive Greg Evans, did not reply. He told the tribunal he either skimmed them and took no action or intended to go back to them and did not.

Williams said Evans had been aware of hearsay that she was ‘winding down’ and this had affected the way Evans dealt with her emails. She pointed out there were older men in the firm’s Cardiff office but no women, and suggested that emails sent by younger men would have received a response.

But the tribunal accepted Evans’ explanation that he made a mistake was ‘credible and human’, having admitted a significant omission on his part that was commercially detrimental to the firm.

The tribunal said there was no evidence to support Williams’ contention that she would have been treated differently as a younger man. ‘We accept that the way the claimant was treated in having her emails ignored in the way they were would have been extremely annoying and probably upsetting for her,’ added the tribunal. ‘We remind ourselves that unfair or unreasonable treatment on its own is not enough.’ Claims of sex and age discrimination were found to be ‘inherently unlikely and incredible’ and were dismissed.