I finally finished reading the judgement last night after starting it and getting distracted when it came out. In almost every instance where there was a conflict between the accounts of the Claimant and other witnesses the Tribunal found the Claimant's version of events to be less believable. The Tribunal wrote (para 21):
21. We begin with a general finding about the Claimant’s evidence. As we explain below, there is no dispute that the Claimant was subjected to transphobic abuse by unknown individuals early in her employment by the First Respondent [Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust]. After that, she was involved in both an investigation of those events and absence management and grievances relating to that. In these claims, not only does she complain about the original incidents, but also about very many of the things that happened to her afterwards, including the management of her absences and the conduct of her grievances.
She now identifies a whole range of things as gender reassignment discrimination or harassment, disability discrimination or harassment, harassment related to sex and/or victimisation. The Tribunal found that the Claimant had a tendency to misremember the detail of events, and in many respects the detail of her evidence or the questions she asked in cross-examination was not fully consistent with the contemporaneous documents. Furthermore, it appeared to the Tribunal that the Claimant’s recollection of events now was affected by her belief, with hindsight, that many of these events were discriminatory.
It's worth noting that the Trust, and therefore the Tribunal, accepted the Claimant's version of events about the "original incidents", although it was not independently verified. This continued to be the case despite her evidence (e.g. her allegations about the identity of the unseen people who had made verbal remarks about her) being undermined by witness testimony, which the Tribunal acknowledged.
The Claimant seems to have been a nightmare employee from before she was even appointed. Having successfully applied for a full time post (37.5 hours per week) she immediately tried to reduce her working week and never actually worked 37.5 hours in a single week during her entire employment by the Trust, as the Tribunal noted in paragraph 132.3:
132.3 [The Trust] did not have a PCP [Provision, Criterion or Practice] of requiring that the Claimant work 37.5 hours per week. On the contrary, despite applying for and accepting a 37.5 hours per week role, the Claimant never worked those hours and was never required to do so. A phased start was agreed with her initially, not for any disability-related reason, but because she had been out of the workplace for so long. After that, adjustments were made to her hours as set out in detail above. Eventually, her contract was formally changed.
The Claimant put me in mind someone, and then it dawned on me: the character Ignatius J Reilly in Johnson Kennedy Toole's excellent A Confederacy of Dunces - another "worker" whose unfortunate employers did their best to accommodate their capricious demands and unsuitability for employment, with disastrous consequences.