Allison Bailey v Stonewall - Employment Tribunal hearing Thread 6

[ickky]

The Tribunal started on 25th April at 10am. If you would like to view online you need to send a request for access as early as possible.

Send an email to

[email protected]

The subject heading of the email request should read

“MEDIA OR PUBLIC ACCESS REQUEST – Case number 2202172/2020 - Ms A Bailey – 25th April 2022.

Then ask for the pin for the online access.

You will be contacted with instructions on how to observe the hearing.

When joining the live tribunal please choose a non inflammatory/offensive name, everyone can see it in the chat - This is a court room, please behave accordingly.

The court chat function is there for official court purposes, not for observers, please don't use it unless you have a technical issue.

On the first page underneath where you put your screen name, select the video and mic that are not crossed out (top option), this is the courts vid and mic.
On the next page select NONE on the drop down windows for vid and mic, these are your own video and mic.

You must be muted so as to not disturb the hearing.

There is also live tweeting from

twitter.com/tribunaltweets
Abbreviations:

AB: Allison Bailey, claimant
BC: Ben Cooper QC, barrister for AB
SW = Stonewall Equality Limited (respondent 1)
IO = Ijeoma Omambala QC, senior counsel - barrister for SW
RW = Robin White junior counsel to SW - assisting IO
GC = Garden Court Chambers Limited (respondent 2) (GCC would be a better abbreviation)
AH = Andrew Hochhauser QC, senior counsel - barrister for GC
JR = Jane Russell junior counsel to GC - assisting AH
RM= Rajiv Menon QC & SH = Stephanie Harrison QC (jointly respondent 3 along with all members of GC except AB)
EJ = Employment Judge Goodman hearing the case
Panel = any one of the three panel members (EJ and two lay members)

Thread 1 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4529887-Allison-Bailey-v-Stonewall-Employment-Tribunal-hearing?

Thread 2 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4542466-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-2

Thread 3 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4545725-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-3

Thread 4 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4546945-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-4

Thread 5 www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4548160-allison-bailey-v-stonewall-employment-tribunal-hearing-thread-5

I suppose that Maya Sikand can't apologise for an absence of due diligence as she delegated this to DDeM but…I'm finding this quite hard to accept.

A lot of clinicians and other very busy professionals review quite huge documents when they (say) review for journals, especially when these are vast systematic reviews and meta-analyses. This is similar for the revision of clinical guidelines where a lot has happened in the interim. The references and sources for these can run into thousands.

If I'm asked to do review these items, in addition to everything else I run an audit whereby a random 10-20% are selected and I check that these are an accurate representation of that primary source. If they're not, I flag this to an editor/whomever, and appropriate action is taken.

It's not adequate to Trust in the absence of Verify.

I just find it quite unbelievable - she was the person tasked with investigating the 'complaints', which included the two tweets she found fault with. But she didn't bother looking at the replies to the tweets?

Seems at complete odds with the fastidious back and forth over precise wording, grammar, fonts(!) in the eventual report.

This is all so bizarre. Now, IANAL, and I haven't been watching the case. I have read getting on for six thousand posts about it on these threads. But a picture is building up.

So here's a conjecture. Let's assume that:

EJ is an intelligent, sensible, knowledgable woman.
The lawyers know what they are doing.
The case is actually fairly straightforward, and the odds are that it will go in Allison's favour.
The law on the case is reasonably clear (as far as employment law can be).

The respondents are doing eveything they can to insure against a finding in Allison's favour by trying to weary the EJ into doing or saying something which will allow them to seek to have the judgement set aside on grounds of partiality, favouritism or some such ground. EJ knows this and is being painstakingly careful not to let this happen.

Possible?

Comments?
Opinions?

Is it a break? I've just been out for half an hour and now when I log in there is no one on any cameras and no sound.

Yep, Pyjama...back in a moment.

They're back, must have been a break

Yes Pyjama, back in now.

Ameanstreakamilewide cheers ears

Just come back from break.

Is that a support cat?

EJ Goodman's cat is making her voice heard. 😂 Perhaps she's trying to communicate with BC's Support Wren??

It's EJ's cat!

EJ has a cat!!! Need to see it.😺

beat me to it IdisagreeMrHochhauser😂

Ha that was funny, EJ's cat disrupting proceedings!!

OMFingG - now there's a cat getting in on the proceedings

Oh hahahahahaha it's the EJ's cat!🐱😂

I haven't read the witness statement but I'm just not getting the same 'outraged by what Allison said' vibes as have from others.

Perhaps I'm wrong but it seems to me that she was agreed to do the investigation into the complaint with a view that it was something and nothing and then quickly found herself in the middle of a shitstorm where her choices were go against the pressure from higher up to denounce Allison as transphobic and subsequently be ostracised like Allison or to undermime her friend by doing a wishy washy investigation that other people basically wrote in her name.

MS is extremely vague isn't she.

‘Maybe I was thinking “oh God, it’s Stonewall, you know.” I don’t know.’

I entirely agree, exwhyzed.

It depends on which claim you're asking about JustSpeculation. Some of the claims AB has against SW and GCC are stronger than others. This particular part of the case, the handling of the complaint from Stonewall, looks reasonably OK for AB, while another part discussed this morning, about AB's having a loss of income as a result of a conspiracy looks less strong.

MS "I would really rather look at ....."
BC gives his very best WTF face to camera 😁

Barristers make the worst witnesses - they are too used to asking the questions

Agree 100% - lack of due diligence.

Also she's said on a couple of occasions that she is a pedant and pays attention to detail and how long she spent over the report. At the same time she seems so vague about everything. Something not adding up.

She doesn't sound a fan of Michelle Brewer's