The Claimant was dismissed after just 3 weeks in employment. He brought claims of unfair dismissal and discrimination. In resisting an application to strike out his claim of unfair dismissal, (the discrimination claims having being dismissed at a full merits hearing) the Claimant asserted that he had been dismissed for an automatically unfair reason under s104 ERA 1996; he also applied to amend his claim to add a complaint of victimisation. The ET concluded that the facts relied on by the Claimant could not support a claim under s104 (he was relying on allegations of breaches of the EA 2010 which were not included within the provisions covered by s104 ERA 1996); it duly struck out his claim of unfair dismissal. The Claimant appealed, contending that it should have been apparent that the facts he was relying on for his victimisation claim could equally form the basis of a claim under section 103A ERA.

The EAT dismissed the appeal. The ET had determined the case before it. It had not sought to anticipate any or all other potential causes of action that might have been said to possibly arise from the facts asserted by the Claimant, but that was not its role and it did not err in law in the assisting the Claimant, as a litigant in person, in the limited way that it did. In any event, the claim would have been bound to fail given the findings made at the Full Merits Hearing of his EqA claims.