Kelly v Leonardo Employment Tribunal Thread 4

[ickky]

The Tribunal has now finished and we await the judgement.

Abbreviations:

C or MK - Claimant, Maria Kelly
NC - Naomi Cunningham, barrister for C
KW - Katy Wedderburn, solicitor for C
R or L - Respondent. Leonardo UK
ST - Susanne Tanner KC, barrister for R
J - Judge
P - Panel member
GC - gender critical
GI - gender identity
AL - Andrew R Letton VP People Shared Services Leonardo - respondent witness

Tribunal Tweets coverage here

https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/kelly-vs-leonardo-uk-ltd

Thread 1 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5416903-kelly-v-leonardo-employment-tribunal-29th-september-10am?page=1

Thread 2 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5420656-kelly-v-leonardo-employment-tribunal-thread-2

Thread 3
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5421183-kelly-v-leonardo-employment-tribunal-thread-3

Perhaps she wanted to rush it out before the Peggie case? Perhaps try and influence other cases?

I agree it was very rushed, I wasn't expecting the judgement so soon.

How long does the EAT process take?

Discussed this with a (non Scottish) KC and this is what they think. (And EJ Sutherland may well have a bit of an inside track on timing of EJ Kemp's ruling.) Gossip is that she is a believer.

I agree! It angers me that women like MK are having to reveal intimate physical details about how awful it is not to have single sex toilets, instead of companies having to justify why they have not provided single sex toilets, as required by various regulations.

I go back to my disappointment that judges don't uphold principles, instead of finding ways to justify circumventing principles, as this judge seems to have done.

It shouldn't matter whether women are experiencing flooding or not - obviously it matters hugely to them - but that's not why there should be men's toilets, women's toilets and accessible toilets, they should be provided regardless of why individuals may need them.

Disappointing.

Isn’t this the same statistical flaw that crops up again and again in courts? Confusing the probability of A given B with the probability of B given A?

The probability that the suspect is guilty given the DNA results is not the same that the probability of the DNA results if the suspect is guilty.

Also - the probability of the test being positive, if you have the disease, vs. the probability you have the disease if the test result is positive.

So, here, confusing the probability that a man attacks you (small) vs. the probability that, having been attacked, your attacker is male (large).

Like others, I had imagined that perhaps the judge made a stupid, ill informed, illogical and sloppy judgement in order to ensure an appeal was inevitable.

But then, we should look at all the other trials and tribunals.

TRAs do not exercise critical thinking. It's possible that if one is struggling so hard to maintain obvious bullshit like 'men are women if they say they are', it weakens one's thinking faculties. Or the cognitive dissonance sucks the mental energy from one so one can only come out with blurts of utter lunacy like an Isla Bumba style 'I don't know if I'm a woman' slogan, mixed in with the occasional thought terminating cliche, and plenty of aggressive, defensive ad homs.

This ideology enthickens people. It destroys the ability to question, test thoughts. It's brittle, and it cannot stand to ever allow for the mistakes and revisions that are an ordinary part of honest thought. Because if most of your arguments are bullshit assertions, you cannot discern between the occasional sensible, true statement mixed into them, and utter nonsense. You can't interrogate an idea on its own merits, you have to check it against the accepted right-think metrics, instead.

So you lose the ability to assess ideas or statements on the basis of plausibility or logic - you are making decisions based on emotive feels, and repeated slogans, the ideology depends on biddable people nodding along to pat statements.

As has also been noted, it depends on cheerleaders and echo chambers, so all the folk on Bluesky patting each others' heads about being 'on the right side of history' never get their ideas challenged or tested. An activist will also start with a pre-conceived conclusion, and work backwards from there.

We end up with brittle bubbles of bullshit that really stink as they are popped. And professionals making outrageously ridiculous conclusions.

'The overall Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) process time in Scotland varies significantly depending on the case's complexity and the tribunal's workload, but cases can take anywhere from several months to over a year to reach a final hearing.' (google ai)

@MyrtleLion - I agree very disappointing - however assuming it is true (and it certainly seems to be from what I heard) then presumably this is the best case a trained legal mind could cobble together for the trans side which might well be encouraging for an EAT challenge.

Maria has asked for it to be expedited. Hopefully it will be just a few months.

I think the judge outsourced the judgement to the GLP.

I have asked for the stats of assaults in public toilets in the past from various government bodies and NGOs and the police. No one collates them in terms of location and design. Not knowing location specifics is also a problem the Sarah Everard enquiry pointed out and there was a particular emphasis on designing out crime.

If the judge was so inclined, she could Google her local area or any town/city. Type in ‘toilet assault’ ‘toilet death’ ‘toilet rape’ etc. or just ‘toilet’ into her local newspaper site. She will soon get an idea on the sex differences and also how important it is to get design right for health and safety.

There are FOIs that can indicate that there are problems but not specifically show the detail needed. The most information I can get is from schools. For example, the police data (if they have it and will share it) will show how many reported rapes there were inside a school but not the location. I know, from research, that disclosed places are private store cupboards and private designs of toilets. It’s obvious that in a school it shouldn’t be able to happen. On ‘Everyone’s Invited’ there are many accounts where girls haven’t told anyone. After the government asked Ofsted to look into abuse in schools off the back of ‘Everyone’s Invited’, Ofsted told schools that they should never assume sexual abuse wasn’t happening because they weren’t aware of it. In fact it was so common that they should assume it is and do all they can to prevent it. They also complained there was no central database to show what was happening. Why should that be any different in the workplace? Do children suddenly become upright moral citizens when they enter the workforce? Some of these perpetrators will be teachers of course.
It is reasonable to assume most serious assaults will be in a private, unsupervised area open to mixed sex: Essex Police West Mercia Metropolitan Police Warwickshire Police West Yorkshire.

The BBC investigated in 2015/6 and concluded there was 1 rape per day reported inside a British School. They also came to the conclusion that is was under reported and a recommendation was to ensure data was collated centrally. Also in the last 10 years more toilets are mixed sex and private in schools - the estimate is 25%. No risk assessment or equality assessment is held by the DfE for the impact on girls and medically vulnerable on private (floor to ceiling) designs. That was my FOI to the DfE.

We need to stop increasing provision where the cubicles are completely private designs and to do this make sure the area in front of the toilet is single sex so the occupants are safer. This applies to anyone and everyone.

It is called the prosecutor’s fallacy

Just recently I was amazed to discover that the dunce cap actually originated a serious instrument used by John Duns Scotus and his followers to funnel knowledge into the brain. I wonder if that bit of trivia was originally seeded in my mind on Mumsnet? 🤨🧐😬

Prof. Alice Sullivan on X:

"The level of motivated innumeracy here is discombobulating.

The judge seems to be arguing that males who identity as women should be admitted to women's toilets because there aren't very many of them, and therefore they will only be responsible for a small proportion of assaults.

You could say the same of red-headed men"

TBH the judgement reminded me of some of the posts on /transgenderuk - it demonstrates the same desperate twisting of facts and figures to shore up the desired conclusion, rather than considering the facts and figures and using them to reach a non pre-determined conclusion.

If (when hopefully) there is an appeal, will Maria have to go on the stand again? And can any new witnesses be called at that point, e.g. a witness expert to look at the stats

Is it OK to post another possible Charity Chair role that I have good reason to believe is Judge Michelle Sutherland, but in circumstances I cannot be sure.

No. An appeal is on points of law only, You only hear from the two counsels and they put their arguments why the judgement is right/wrong based on law and case law.

So gutted for Maria after all she went through. Angry at the poor reasoning in the judgement (took me a while to get through).

I work in IT and sometimes in offices so this is for personal concern for me and i am so grateful to Maria and the legal team.

@Keeptoiletssafe I thought of you yesterday - was in an NT place and the ladies had a row of sinks on the left and a row of loos with floor to ceiling doors on the right. Given the weekday term time visitors are largely older women, I did think, if one of us keeled over in the loo, how long would it take before discovery? I suppose most people do go to NT sites in groups though.

Are any gardens being dug for the appeal? When I heard the news this morning my reaction was, really?!

The poor man in Edinburgh council office toilets was there 6 days this summer. There was a lady earlier in the year in a restaurant toilet in England for 3 days. That’s why public toilets are not supposed to be ‘lockable’ in English and Scottish building standards (even though judges imply differently). That only works properly as a safety measure if you notice the occupant having a medical emergency in time, of course.

In the Scottish Government’s Building Standards Division Non-domestic Technical Handbook,
Mandatory Standard 3.12 states
Every building must be designed and constructed in such a way that sanitary facilities are provided for all occupants of, and visitors to, the building in a form hat allows convenience of use and that there is no threat to the health and safety of occupants or visitors.

The judge did not make conditional probability calculations.

There are probably more TiMs who will now feel free to use the ladies toilets, than there ever would be joining the GGs and the WI.

Victory of sorts for them in their eyes, balancing out the GG and WI issue, and onwards to full capitulation.

What is the point of the SC ruling now, and will the Government be swayed into refusing to authorise the guidelines. They were delayed for a reason I think.

Does anyone know why this case had only a judge, rather than a panel? I'm sure there was a reason in one of the earlier threads, but hoping someone might know off the top of their head.

The sleuthing that some have done may give some explanation as to why there was much more focus on the Belfast panel a few weeks ago. If so, it'll probably need to be par for the course and I'd expect some savvy people start to lock down and cleanse accounts.